Obituary of Meredith Wood
Remembrance of Meredith C. Wood (1913 - 2018)
Meredith Ellen Corkins Wood was born at home October 1, 1913, the youngest of two brothers and a sister, the children of Genie Emma Ray Corkins and Clarence Eugene Corkins on their Ray Hill family farm in Wilmington, Vermont. Growing up in the years before radio, she and her friends, such as Janet Barber Pool, played in the fields and woods, and helped her mother with chores. In the winter, they amused themselves by descending hills on what they called a “double buck” -- a single ski with two homemade wooden seats nailed on. She also recalled how fond she was of listening to her grandfather, Francis E. “Frank” Ray, who had retired from farming and lived in the town on East Main Street. By 1924, when he died, he was Wilmington’s last resident Civil War veteran. Meredith remembered how proud she was of him as each Memorial Day he mounted a white horse to lead the town’s parade.
Graduating from Wilmington High School in 1930, she left the farm, and moved to Newton Centre, Massachusetts to attend Lesley University. She lived at 541 Ward Street, the home of her older sister, Geneva Ray Corkins Freeman, Geneva’s husband Richard Woodworth Freeman, and their two children, Richard and Jean. At Lesley, Meredith majored in home economics, with an emphasis on nutrition and meal planning. Graduating early, in 1933, she secured a job at Newton-Wellesley Hospital to earn certification as a Dietician. She was also an active Aunt to her nephew and niece at the house on Ward Street.
Cooking, baking, embroidery, millinery, and sewing were both skills and pastimes for her. Later in life, she made the dresses for her bridesmaids and play clothing for her own children, as well as halloween costumes. She knew how to piece together old pieces of wool and braid them into rugs, including her husband’s dress Navy uniform. That was after she had used the same materials to make her children wool snowsuits. She also enjoyed playing the piano, both for own enjoyment and to entertain others.
In the 1930s she worked planning meals and baking pastries at Barbara Dean’s Tea Room, in Ogunquit, Maine, and the Falmouth Foreside Tavern in Falmouth, Maine. When her help was needed in Wilmington, she moved there to assist her oldest brother, Ray E. Corkins, operate the Green Shutters restaurant (now known as Dot’s) in one of Wilmington’s oldest buildings, next to the Deerfield River. Returning to Massachusetts, Meredith started work at the Cedar Hill Girl Scouts facility in Waltham. There she met her future husband, Robert L. Wood, a Boston University student, who had a part-time job doing maintenance. At the outbreak of World War II, Robert L. Wood enlisted in the Navy, which placed him in the V-12 officers college training program, and sent him to Yale, where, as an Ensign, he graduated with a B.S. degree in Engineering in the class of 1945W.
On November 17, 1945, Meredith married Robert L. Wood at Newton’s First Congregational Church. They moved to a two family house at 45 Elmore Street in Newton Centre, near the house at 541 Ward Street where her older sister and brother-in-law still lived. Two years later, a son Robert H. Wood was born. During the course of the pregnancy she had to undergo surgery for the removal of a tumor adjacent to the fetus. Much later, she was giving a medical history to a doctor who asked her what had become of the fetus, to which she replied that he had just turned 40. The following year, in 1948, another son, Norman R. Wood, made his appearance, without complications.
As the post World War II housing shortage began to ease, the young family was able to move to a larger house, all their own, at 19 High Rock Street in Westwood, Massachusetts. The house needed some work, and Meredith, in between caring for two small boys, helped her husband to re-side the house with cedar shakes. Concerned with her widowed mother’s relatively isolated life on the farm in Wilmington, she invited her mother, Genie Corkins, to live with them, where she had a first floor bedroom and was able to spoil her new grandchildren. In 1954, a third son arrived: Douglas M. Wood. Meredith’s hopes of ever having a daughter were dashed until after the passage of some years, she acquired two daughters (in law) that she had always wanted.
After a two year stay at 166 New Meadow Road, Barrington, Rhode Island, Meredith and her family move to a newer house, at 122 Edgewood Road, Westwood, Massachusetts. Caring for her husband, three noisy boys, and her mother, who by then had suffered a stroke, and was obliged to use a wheelchair, she cooked, baked, sewed, braided rugs, and indulged her love of gardening with extensive plantings of both flowers and vegetables. She even “put up” the surplus of vegetable in mason jars. In her copious free time, she served as a Cub Scout den mother, and ferried her children to swimming in Hale’s Pond at the Dover and Westwood Conservation Club. When a salesman who worked for her husband foolishly gave the family some chicks for Easter, she relied on her farming background to care for them. All of them lived, and grew up to become chickens, duly housed in a corner of the suburban backyard. Meanwhile, her children and all their friends were treated to a never-ending supply of chocolate chip cookies, brownies, congo bars, and cinnamon rolls. At Christmas, she would put out containers of colored frosting, sprinkles, cut-up gumdrops, and have her children decorate specially cut out cookies for the season--a tradition that continued with her grandchildren, and now great grandchildren. She exhibited boundless energy.
When her mother’s declining health made it necessary for her to enter a nursing home, in New Hampshire, she drove there weekly, bringing along one or the other of her two oldest children to accompany her. She never described it as a duty; it was just something to be done.
In January 1961, Meredith and her family moved to a house on the Mount Hermon campus of the Northfield Mount Hermon School, near the Connecticut River in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. She was elated to be back in the country, where, as she put it, she could, “lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” (Psalm 121). She planted even bigger gardens, and put her sons to work at the end of winter collecting sap after they returned home from school so that she could boil it down to make her own maple syrup. As a faculty wife, whe was actively involved, not only with the friends and Mt. Hermon classmates of Bob and Norm, but also with the growing number of faculty children who were approximately in the same age group as Doug. She also had time to spare to feed the men who reported to her husband, when snow storms required everyone to work late into the night.
In 1970 when her husband accepted a job at Boston College, Meredith moved with him to a house at 50 Concord Road, Wayland, Massachusetts. But on March 9, 1975 her husband died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 54. Meredith sold the Wayland house and moved back to 541 Ward Street, Newton Centre, to live with and care for her older sister Geneva, also widowed, and in declining health.
At a time when most people retire, Meredith resolved to keep busy, and obtained a part time job as a cashier at The Eagle’s Nest, part of the food service operation at Boston College. During the great blizzard of 1978, she managed to get to work by cajoling a ride in the back of a newspaper delivery truck. She loved being around the Boston College students, never missing a chance to tell them what to eat and not eat.
Her older sister Geneva, her only surviving sibling, passed away on February 1, 1979. Meredith moved to the lower half of a two family house owned by Robert and Mary Morrison in Newtonville, and, like Meredith, members of Central Congregational Church. She remained there, at 65 Withington road for 33 years--longer than she had lived anywhere else. Continuing to work at Boston College until she was 85, she also travelled in the summer to Scotland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, as well as to the western part of the United States. At 87, she attended Homecoming, a once every ten year event held in Wilmington, Vermont. She did consent to let one of sons drive her. At home in Newtonville, she remained active in church affairs at Central Congregational, and later, after that church closed it doors, Second Church in Newton. She kept in shape with aquatics, and, in the company of friends, attended concerts and plays in the greater Boston area.
On June 28, 2012, at the age of 98, Meredith underwent surgery for the installation of a heart pacemaker. The operation took place at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, where all three of her children had been born, and where she had been trained as a Dietician more than three quarters of a century earlier. The doctors discouraged her from continuing to live alone, so later that summer she moved to an apartment at the Scandinavian Living Center, an assisted living facility located, like Second Church, in West Newton. She made good use of the fitness center there. Fitness Director Corrine Bennett was quoted on page 7 of the Center’s December 2013 News & Events publication, “Meredith is persistent, dedicated and stubborn. She knows exactly what she wants to do and likes feeling strong. Her strength on the leg press is impressive.”
Advancing age finally made it necessary for Meredith to receive care 24 hours a day, more than was possible in an assisted living setting. In early 2015 she moved to Hancock Hall, a nursing home in Danbury, Connecticut. Danbury was chosen because it is near the home of her son Norman and her daughter-in-law Charlotte P. Wood, as well as her granddaughter, Megan, Megan’s husband Sachit Rajbanshi, and two of her great grandchildren, Sabine and Sebastian Rajbanshi. She was also only a two hours drive from her son Douglas, her daughter-in-law Lynn B. Wood, and two of her grandsons, Theodore R. “Teddy” Wood and Thomas C. Wood. She received frequent visits from all of them. Her other grandson, Benjamin R. Wood, and her other great granddaughter, Lucia V. Wood, were able to visit from their home in Santiago, Chile. Her other son Robert H. Wood travelled from his home in Washington, DC, as did his husband, Kenneth C. Willis, until the latter’s death on July 29, 2015. Her 103d birthday party at Hancock Hall also featured visits from one of her cousins, Jack Ray, and his wife Barbara, and one of her nephews, Richard W. Freeman, and his fiancee Barbara Campbell. In addition to those, Meredith is also survived by a nephew, John Ray Corkins, who is in nursing home in Rochester, New Hampshire, and a sister- in- law, Marjorie W. Kent, of Woburn, Massachusetts.
Meredith C. Wood died shortly before noon on Saturday, June 2, 2018, with two of her sons, Norman and Douglas, by her side, at Hancock Hall, Danbury, Connecticut. She was 104 years of age.
