Monica Flaherty Frassetto

Monica Flaherty Frassetto In Memoriam DUMMERSTON Monica Flaherty Frassetto, 88, died Saturday, June 14, at her home in Dummerston, after courageously facing cancer. She was born May 4, 1920, in South Norwalk, Conn., to Robert J. Flaherty and Frances Hubbard Flaherty. Monica began a lifetime of travel and wide learning when, on her third birthday, she landed in Samoa where her mother and father began work on Moana, one of their ground-breaking documentary films. She attended school for two years near Heidelberg, Germany, and graduated from high school in Devonshire, England. Unable to return to England from the United States when World War II began, Monica took flying lessons in 1940, and spent the next four years flying planes as a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP), stationed out of Alamagordo, New Mexico. Following her service during the war, Monica worked as a researcher at Fortune Magazine and at the Betty Parsons Art Gallery in New York, before marrying Roy Lockwood in 1947. They divorced in 1951 and she moved to the Virgin Islands and then to Puerto Rico, where she began working as an archeologist. While there, she met and married Roberto Prassetto, and together they continued the archeological work until moving to his native Italy. On leaving Italy after several years, Monica returned to Puerto Rico, where she lived untio 1970 when she moved to the Flaherty Study Center in Dummerston to care for her mother. She later donated her home in Puerto Rico to the Conservation Society of Puerto Rico. For the past 38 years, Monica deeply enjoyed living in Vermont, and dedicated her energy and skills to preserving the Study Center and helping to make available to as many people as possible her mother and father's work in film. This included returning to Samoa to record and later edit and produce a sountrack to Moana, and to subsequently show the sound version to many audiences in Europe and the United States. Her wide-ranging interests included singing, artistic expression, sailing, and reading. What meant the most to this independent woman was the spirit of friendship which she enjoyed with many people around the world. Monica was predeceased by her sisters, Barbara Flaherty van Ingen and Frances Flaherty Rohr. She leaves her stepdaughter, Floriana Frassetto of Alstatten, Switzerland; nephews, Jonathan Rohr of Dummerston, Robert van Ingen of Bellfountain, Ontario, Canada, and Michael van Ingen of Mysore, India; niece, Jocelyn van Ingen of England; and many friends. FUNERAL NOTICE: Monica was cremated, and her remains will be privately interred in Dummerston.