MARY PAYSON HARTDEGEN

MARY PAYSON HARTDEGEN


Obituary for Mary Payson Hartdegen, 11 November, 1917 - 4 December, 2013
WESTFIELD, Mass. - Mary Payson Hartdegen died Wednesday, 4 December, 2013, at home surrounded by her children.
She had celebrated her 96th birthday on Armistice Day.
Mary Payson, the first of two daughters born to Harold Chase and Madeleine Fuller McDowell Greene, was born in New York City but the family moved to Bronxville, in Westchester County, and she grew up there with her sister, Betty, who predeceased her in 1977.
Mrs Hartdegen was educated at the Westover School and Vassar College and worked in New York City at U.S. Rubber (later Uniroyal) prior to her marriage in 1947 to Carl Hartdegen III, a U.S. Naval officer. She lived with her husband near various naval installations until 1956 when he resigned his commission and began a career as an oceanographic acoustical physicist working at SOFAR, a research station operated on a U.S. military base on St. David's Island, Bermuda under the aegis of Columbia University.
The family lived briefly on Watling Island in Hamilton Harbour before moving to Devonshire where they lived at 'Glen Haven' on Middle Road for a few years.
The Hartdegens moved to 'Ivy Cottage' on Ord Road in Paget in 1958 and they lived there until the elder Hartdegens moved their empty nest to 'Bridge House', off the square in St George, in 1976.
In Bermuda Mrs Hartdegen worked part time at SOFAR editing grant proposals and scientific reports but the bulk of her energies were devoted to local charitable efforts.
She organized the first island-wide Halloween collection on the UNICEF model in the late 1950s which benefited the Lady Cubitt Compassionate Association and the Committee of 25. She was active in other organized Bermuda charities such as the Pink Ladies and Sterling Stitchers of the Ladies Auxiliary of King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.
After 25 years in Bermuda, the research station moved to Florida in 1981 to operate from the Naval Air Station at Cape Canaveral, where she and her husband acquired a beachfront condominium.
In Florida she worked as a freelance wordsmith and continued to volunteer her time and energy, delivering Meals on Wheels and working on efforts to keep the beaches clean where she perfected her technique of unobtrusively picking up litter she encountered and carrying it home, both on the beach and later on the streets of her Holland Avenue neighborhood.
Mrs Hartdegen was widowed in 1991 but stayed in Florida until she moved to Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1998 to be closer to her children.
Music had been an important part of Mrs Hartdegen's time at Westover and Vassar, and in New York City she sang with a professional chorale. In Bermuda she had sung with The Bermuda Philharmonic Society and she continued her avocation in Florida singing with the Brevard Community Chorus, the BCC Concert Choir and the associated International Cathedral Music Festival Chorus, participating in three of the chorus's European tours singing in venues such as Canterbury and Salisbury cathedrals in Great Britain and Il Duomo di Firenze in Italy. In Westfield, Mrs Hartdegen continued to sing, participating in the Westfield State College Community Chorale, the Greater Westfield Choral Association, the Church of the Atonement choir and The Friendly Visitors.
In Bermuda, Mrs Hartdegen worshiped with her family at St. Paul's and St Peter's Anglican Churches, in Florida she was a communicant at St. David's by the Sea Episcopal Church and she was a member of the Church of the Atonement in Westfield.
She is survived by her children: Ann Burden Hartdegen of Chicago, Ill., Carl E. Hartdegen of Westfield and Cynthia Payson Hartdegen and her wife, Kate Deviny, of Westfield; her grandchildren, Raylene M. Demorest of Pleasant Gap, Penn., Zachery H. Naldrett of Tempe, Ariz., and Sophia N. Hartdegen of Windsor, Conn.; her great-grandson Cyrus E. Holt of Pleasant Gap, Pennsylvania.
She is also survived by her sister-in-law Georgianna Booth of Willington, Conn., foster-grandson Augustine Fannah, step-grandsons Matthew and Daniel Schlotte, former in-laws Michael Naldrett and Sean Holt and several nieces and nephews.
She leaves the devoted caregivers of her final years - Jane Sevigne, Wendy Burke, Joann Foley and Alicia Bean.
And Orlando, the marmalade cat.
The funeral was at The Church of the Atonement in Westfield on Monday, 23 December.
Her remains will be interred at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the convenience of the family.
Contributions in lieu of flowers may be made to the Lady Cubitt Compassionate Association, P.O. Box HM64, Hamilton, HMAX, Bermuda, the Space Coast Feline Network, P.O. Box 624, Cocoa, FL. 32923 or the Greater Westfield Choral Association, P.O. Box 1968, Westfield. MA.
I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. 2 Timothy 4:7