Published May 15, 2023 at 6:00 a.m.
Stephanie Slack Herrick died on May 12, 2023. She was born October 30, 1938, in S. Weymouth, Mass., to Ann Marie Denly and Leo James Slack Sr.
Stephanie
lived in New Jersey, Ohio, England, Wisconsin, California, Virginia
and Montréal before she found her place in Vermont in 1976. She
loved learning. She earned three bachelor’s degrees. The first was
in physical therapy from Marquette University, the second in business
from the University of Vermont and the third was in English (also
from UVM). In 1997, she received a master’s degree from Middlebury
College’s Bread Loaf School of English. She was a member of Phi
Beta Kappa and the Jesuit National Honor Society. She also studied
in Italy at the University of Perugia, where she felt a special
affection for the countrymen of her maternal grandparents. She was
licensed to practice physical therapy in 1959 in the state of
Wisconsin but did not continue that career. Instead, she became a
CPA, licensed in Vermont.
Stephanie
was, at one time, a specialist in Canadian/U.S. taxation and wrote a
tax guide for professional football players. She founded the
accounting firm Herrick, Ltd. in 1980 and sold it to her associates
in 1987 and continued to work for them while she studied and
traveled. She was appointed to the Vermont Board of Accountancy by
governor Madeleine Kunin.
Stephanie
loved sports, especially tennis, golf, skiing and windsurfing. She
once windsurfed alone across Lake Champlain, from Vermont to New
York, picked a flower which she placed in her life jacket, sailed
back and wrote a poem about the experience. She stopped often to
smell the flowers and listen to the birds, especially while in the
tent-camper on her hay field in Greensboro. She continued to ski at
Stowe even after she tore her ACL on Hayride in 1990. In 1994, she
finally skied Upper National and wrote it into a series of stories
about her grandson Andrew. She was overjoyed to get her free ski pass
at Smuggs when she reached 70 and at Bolton when she was 75.
She
was an active member of the Mountain View Country Club and served as
their auditor for 16 years and president for one
year.
She was a board and finance committee member, but she especially
enjoyed being the club publicist, with her weekly articles in the
sports section of the Hardwick
Gazette.
She was occasionally a mixed-doubles tennis finalist but rarely a
winner. She did win the women’s singles and, with Gil McArthur, the
doubles, in Westmount, Québec, in the early 1970s. Her best golf
scores for nine holes were a 40 in 1996 and a 41 in 2000 (She never
learned how to putt properly.). With partner Jim Hunt, they won the
Calcagni Tournament for low gross three times.
She
lived in Burlington for 22 years and served there on the boards of
the Burlington Tennis Club and the Chittenden County United Way for
six years. She also served as treasurer of the Bill Gray for U.S.
Senate campaign in 1988. After living in Greensboro from 1998 to
2014, she returned to Burlington to be closer to family and to
downsize. Having volunteered to help do tax returns through AARP for
six years in Greensboro, she did the same in Burlington. She
continued
to play tennis with old and new friends at The Edge and,
occasionally, in Greensboro, on the beautiful clay courts at MVCC.
Her favorite pastime was
sailing her Sunfish on Caspian Lake.
In
Greensboro, she was chair, treasurer, and clerk of the works,
overseeing the renovation of the Greensboro Free Library from 2008 to
2009. She also served as chair and secretary of the Board of the
Greensboro Land Trust and auditor of the Greensboro Association. She
quietly
gave
her professional assistance to several nonprofit organizations in the
community, following the example set by her beloved parents.
Stephanie
set out to take each grandchild on a trip. Starting with Kelsey, they
toured Munich, Prague and Vienna. With Katrine and Kathlyn, they
visited Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona. She and Karissa climbed Mt.
Olympus together and sailed in the Aegean Sea. She and Andrew visited
Munich and Istanbul. Izzy, Giulia, and Jack did not have their own
trip with her, but they have skied, biked, cooked and played together
in various countries. In
2019 she lost her grandson Clark, whose courage in the face of cancer
set the bar for her.
In
three later years, she spent a winter month in Mexico to study
Spanish. She spent a month in Munich trying to learn German and
thrice sojourned in Italy to learn Italian. She intended to spend
time writing and compiling all the correspondence she has kept
throughout the years — both letters and emails. Instead, she has
been a volunteer guardian ad litem in Chittenden County Family Court.
Stephanie
Slack married John M. (Jack) Herrick of Bismarck, N.D. in 1959, and
they were divorced in 1975, before he died of cancer in 1980. She is
survived by her children and their families: Mike and Ellen Herrick,
Kimberley and Charles Schmitt, Steven and René Herrick, M. Catherine
(Katy) and Andreas Herrick; her brother David and his wife, Linda;
and several nephews and nieces. She is predeceased by her older
brother Leo. She is survived by her cousins, for whom she had much
affection. She is also survived by Jack's siblings and their
children, who remain close to their cousins. She has had a few very
dear friends and companions, chief among them being Erich Walka.
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