Obituary: Naomi Flanders, 1953-2025

Naomi
Flanders, who spent a passionate life filled with a love of singing,
teaching voice, and fostering music and art in the central Vermont
community she loved so much, passed away at McClure Miller Respite
House in Colchester on Sunday, February 23, 2025.

A
consummate student of the breath, and her belief in the breadth of
the human voice to lift spirits and bring joy, she took her own last
breath around 4:30 a.m., after six peaceful days that capped a
two-and-a-half-year struggle with dementia. Her week in hospice care
brought a wonderful outpouring from family, friends and the many
people whose lives she touched with her humor, belief in their talent
and her dedication to their music and personal growth. Born on
January 14, 1953, she was 72 years old, a life too short for her
feisty spirit and robbed of the golden years she hoped for.

She
grew up on Brazier Road in East Montpelier with eight brothers and
sisters, born to her father, Ralph, and mother, Anne (Lawson)
Flanders. Their rambunctious life in a small house, surrounded by
forests, farm fields and a wetland instilled in her deep lifelong
connections to the family property and her neighbors in East
Montpelier. It is where she did yoga outside in winter, like her
father kept an (unruly) garden and spent many hours seated with
friends under the maples looking at vistas of the fields and hills.

Naomi
went to Johnson State College, where her love of poetry and English
blossomed, and she received a bachelor of arts and humanities. She
also began to deal with the bouts of depression that seemed so out of
character with her exuberant laugh and zest. While they lingered
throughout her life, she found ways to balance out those moods with
travel, gardening, lots of (very) strong coffee, frequent bread
baking and dinners, and a number of close friendships that were
tested at times but also gave her great comfort and many
conversations, always punctuated by laughter.

Naomi
achieved her dream to sing professionally by going to New York City
in the 1980s to study with renowned vocal coach and Feldenkrais
practitioner Marcy Lindheimer. She worked as a nanny and became
lifelong friends with the Brickman family, spinning tales of Vermont
and working her wonders with fresh dough for baking bread and pies.

Returning
to Vermont, her career blossomed as a voice teacher, with boundless
insight and energy and turning countless tin ears and untuned voices
into confident sopranos, altos and tenors. She launched myriad teens
and elders alike onto life on the stage at Unadilla Theater in East
Calais and in her own musical productions through Echo Valley
Community Arts, the nonprofit she created in 2002. Her teaching
passion especially focused on young men and women through her private
lessons and choral and Shakespeare camps held during summers in East
Montpelier, where she taught them to find their voice in myriad ways
beyond the words they sang or said. She also worked at the Monteverdi
Music School in Montpelier, where she taught voice, was choir
director and sang with the Onion River Chorus.

Her
own musical tastes led her to a dedicated embrace of opera, which
suited her rich voice and temperament. Operatic opportunities not
exactly being a thing in Vermont, she grabbed the baton and as member
and president of Vermont Opera Theater in the early 1990s produced,
directed and fundraised with numerous galas. She performed numerous
times, putting on Mozart’s Don Giovanni and The Magic
Flute. She also directed and performed in many Gilbert and
Sullivan classics at Unadilla Theater, whose stage in East Calais was
for years her virtual summer home, a place where many friendships and
much fun were fostered.

In
September of 1988, she married Andrew Nemethy of Calais at Christ
Church in Montpelier, and they celebrated under an auctioneer’s
tent pitched in a field with a boisterous celebration, led by the
rocking music of Gale Harris, her bestie and lead singer in the band.
They separated ten years later but remained friends and jointly
raised their daughter, Esther Nemethy, who was born on September 15,
1993, and now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she works as a
nurse.

The
sale of the family home in 2020 was followed by the first hints of
the dementia that also afflicted first her mother, and then her
father, after a serious heart issue. Throughout her memory struggles,
her life was anchored by the incredible support of the parishioners
at Christ Church, which she thought of as her “home.” During her
six months living in an apartment on Elm Street in 2024, she visited
daily and was assisted in this happy period of independence by
wonderful caregivers Raylene Lissor, Mary Rose Dougherty, Kelly
Fairchild and especially Linda Radtke, as well as by Andrew Nemethy,
who became her guardian along with their daughter Esther.

She
is survived by her daughter, Esther, and her ex, Andrew Nemethy;
brothers, Jon and Jamie; sisters, Deb, Elizabeth, Lois and Eunice;
nephews, Neil, Rhys and Darrel, and Isaac; nieces, Brit and Mary
Clare; and longtime friends, Dug Nap, Nancy Webb and Gale Harris, as
well as friends and family in Vermont and far-flung places. She is
now reunited with her brothers, Tim and Mark, who predeceased her, as
did her beloved dogs, Hazel and little Happy, her shih tzu.

A
memorial service, aptly filled with music, was attended by more than
180 people on Saturday, March 1, at Christ Episcopal Church.

This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2025.