Margaret Kathryn Tower Whittemore
August 23rd, 1924 –– June 10th, 2016
Died after a brief illness
Peg Whittemore was a native New Englander. She entered this life in a genuine borning house in the town of Sunderland, Massachusetts, the second child of Alfred and Laura (Sabin) Tower. Following a tradition of scholarship and enterprise in her family as evidenced by her paternal grandfather being the headmaster of Lawrence Academy, and her father, a chemistry professor at Massachusetts Agricultural College, Peg attended school in Newton, Mass. She was a good athlete as well as a good scholar. In her youth she worked summers as a Girl Scout camp counselor at Treasure Island on Lake Winnipesauke. She matriculated the University of New Hampshire with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. She was listed in the Who’s Who of College Students for the year 1946, and served as president of Women’s Student Government in her senior year at UNH, where she also taught chemistry, and then embarked upon a marriage that lasted 25 years.
Peg’s family moved to Sudbury in 1960. She became membership chairman of the First Parish Unitarian Church when Reverend Carl Scovel was its minister. Earning a Water Safety Instructor certification, she ran the town of Sudbury’s swimming program at Walden Pond for some years. In 1966, she became one of fourteen women nationally to win a full scholarship to obtain an advanced degree under the auspices of the National Science Foundation. She enrolled in Wellesley College, earning there a Master of Science diploma in chemistry. Circumstances then led her into the field of life sciences, and she worked for 22 years for Instrumentation Laboratory, rising to the level of Senior Research Chemist and manager.
Retiring in 1990, she turned her attention to issues on the societal level of this state’s prisons, participating in a leadership role with the Norfolk Prison Fellowship program. Peg continued to act upon her concern for the prospects of inmates, accepting a seat on the board of SPAN, Inc., a non-profit organization offering re-integration services to released prisoners as well as a street-based A.I..D.S. clinic in Boston. In the lingo of The Big House, Peg is a “Sister.”
The community of Sudbury recognized her as an environmental advocate of the first water. She helped lead the Sudbury Earth Decade Committee, now Sustainable Sudbury. In municipal work, Peg was coordinator of the Council on Aging’s Senior Work program, and drove residents to their doctor’s appointments for the Friends in Service to Humanity program of that same department. She also served on the Healthy Schools Committee, and the Citizen’s Advisory Committee of the town. Before that, she led inspection, maintenance, and tours of the trails of town open land under the auspices of the Conservation Commission. Well before that, she was a warm-up pitcher for the little league teams her sons joined.
When she got any recreation time, Peg devoted much of it in the winter to black-diamond downhill skiing. In season, rollerblading, hiking, organic gardening occupied her time, as well as a book group, and a health group.
Surviving her are three sons: Leigh and Bethany (Johnson) Whittemore of Scarborough, Maine and their older son Nathaniel and his spouse, Jessica of San Francisco, CA and younger son, Alexander of Los Angeles, CA; Gary Whittemore of Groton, Mass. and his former spouse, Linda Taricano of Littleton, Mass. and their two children Kelsea of Jamaica Plain and Jay of Brooklyn, NY; and Alan and his spouse, Neika of Pasadena, California; as well as her partner of forty years, Timothy Coyne of Sudbury, Mass.
A woman who made it in a man’s world, and continued to make that world better as she went along, she was a vibrant and intelligent contributor to the lives of many, many people.
Arrangements entrusted to the care of the John C. Bryant Funeral Home of Wayland.