Ann Hawthorne

Lancaster-Ann Hawthorne of 5 Lost Nation Road in Lancaster passed away unexpectedly at her home on December 18, 2012. Born in Long Beach, California, April 14, 1944, daughter of Grace and Lt. William G. Hawthorne Jr, USN, and raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado, she adopted New England as her heart's home during her school years at Mt. Holyoke College, where she majored in classical languages and literature. She lived in Montreal, Quebec, in the late 1960s, where she taught Latin and English at the Weston School, and in Micronesia, where she taught grade school. She earned Master's degrees from the University of Vermont and the University of Michigan in Greek and Latin. In 1979 she moved with her daughter Sage to Gorham, New Hampshire, where she enjoyed acting with The North Country Players theater group, and later Ann moved to Rindge, NH. Except for another short spell in Massachusetts, she lived the rest of her life in New Hampshire, the last almost 10 years of her life in Lancaster, her best years, so she felt, and her favorite place in the world.

Ann's most loved and enjoyed activity was working with her team of Suffolk Punch draft horses, Dancer and Hosmer, giving sleigh rides or mowing and doing other jobs in her pasture at Larkrise, as she called her home, or riding behind her team up Pleasant Valley Road, sometimes with her grandsons Simon and Leland by her side, visiting with friends along the way. She regularly participated in work horse activities at Fair Winds Farm in Brattleboro, Northeast Animal Power Field Days in Tunbridge, where she was a contributor to the Women's Teamster Forum, and elsewhere, "humbly offering her experience as a 'later in life' arrival to the passion and realities of working with draft animals," as a dear teamster friend put it. When she stood and gazed at her big horse Hosmer, and exclaimed "my beautiful boy," you could see that he was her soul.

She loved the people of the North Country and the life lived here. Among the other causes that she heartily espoused were maintaining the small family farms, sustainable farming, and always "eating local" food, as much as possible from her own garden, and from the farms of friends, and she never missed a visit to the Farmers Market in Lancaster on Saturday morning. She was a very fine cook and an expert pie maker and rightfully very proud of her pie crust. Her pancakes made from her Aunt "Nini" Maytag's recipe were beyond doubt far and away the lightest and best all her friends and family ever tasted or expect to.

Preceded in death by her grandparents Genette H. Hawthorne and Col. William G. Hawthorne USMC, Retired, and her parents Grace and Lt. William G. Hawthorne, Jr, USN, Ann is survived by her loving husband Peter de Lissovoy of Lancaster, NH, and sons Noah P. de Lissovoy of Austin, TX, and Sandy Blue de Lissovoy of Los Angeles, CA; her precious daughter Sage H. Kennedy, son-in-law Peter M. Kennedy, and grandsons Leland and Simon of East Calais, VT; her beloved aunt Cornelia H. Maytag of Colorado Springs, CO; her dear sister Lorraine Olsen and brother-in-law Val Hendrickson of San Francisco, CA, and her Aunt Madeline Crawford of Newport Beach, CA; and cousins Capt. Robert E. Hawthorne, Jr, USN, Retired, of Knoxville, TN, Garland Johnson of McLean, VA, Hillery H. Graham of Oceanside, CA, and Lynn Maytag, James B. Maytag, Jr, and Nancy Giovanini of Colorado Springs, CO.

Ann came from a Navy family and her father, Lt. William "Budge" Hawthorne, a Navy flier, as well as her uncle Captain Robert E. Hawthorne, USN, Retired, and her grandfather, are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. An interesting discovery while living in Rindge, New Hampshire, was to find a small private cemetery where direct ancestors of Ann's from the 1700s are buried, including one from Rindge who fought in the American Revolution.

Ann was an editor of fine books by profession and for nearly 20 years, while she lived in Rindge, New Hampshire, she was a senior editor at Harvard University Press. She was an expert and nationally known editor, and always in demand by authors who trusted their books only to Ann. While living in Gorham, NH, Ann began working for Harvard Press as a freelance editor of the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, and after that huge project was published to great critical acclaim in 1980, HUP hired her full-time. She edited such notable titles as The Kennedy Tapes, The Black Book of Communism, Facing East from Indian Country, American Empire, Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death, and many others. A colleague of Ann's said: "Ann approached life on her own terms. To many who got to know her, she was both an incisive critic and a loyal friend. Her authors, with a few thin-skinned exceptions, admired her take-no-prisoners style of editing." Ann retired in 2002 but continued freelancing for the Harvard Press and other publishers.

Ann was an avid reader and her favorite place in town was understandably Weeks Memorial Library and hardly a few days ever passed without her visiting Weeks Memorial Library and without a phone call at home that a book she had ordered at the library had kindly been found for her. She was very much at home at Weeks Library and with her friends there. It was a rare trip to town that did not feature a stop to pick up or return books at the Library. Memorial donations in Ann Hawthorne's memory may be made to Weeks Memorial Library in Lancaster: Weeks Memorial Library

128 Main Street, Lancaster, NH 03584