Henrietta Nash Paine

Henrietta Nash Paine, 93, former longtime Weston resident, homemaker and activist. Once describing herself as a liberal and a nuclear pacifist, longtime Weston, Massachusetts, resident Rita Paine died peacefully on March 30, 2013 in Midlothian, Virginia, where she had lived for the past eleven years. Born in Warrenton, Virginia, in 1919, Henrietta Rutgers Crosby Nash spent her first five years living in Menton, France. After her familys return to the U.S., she attended the Potomac and Madeira Schools in Washington, D.C., and Miss Halls School in Pittsfield, Massachusetts . A 1941 graduate of Vassar College, she majored in bacteriology and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. She earned a masters degree in public health from Yale Medical School in 1943. In December 1942, while she was a graduate student at Yale, she married John B. Paine, Jr., Harvard 23, a Boston-based investment counsel headed for French Morocco as Lieutenant Paine USNR a year after Pearl Harbor. She volunteered as a nurses aide during the war. While raising four children after World Wa r II, she became active in public and community affairs. Her activism began with tutoring African-American students in Poughkeepsie while at Vassar in 1939. In the late 1950s- early 1960s she was an active member of SANE Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, Voice of Women (VOW), and Women Strike for Peace and served on the national board of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, working toward nuclear disarmament, civil rights, and seating the Peoples Republic of China in the UN. In her community she was active in he First Parish Church, Community League, and the Weston Forest & Trail Association. She also supported the Weston Coalition assisting Roxbury schoolchildren and volunteered in Boston inner city schools, became involved in the womens movement, and sang in the First Parish Church choir. In 1986, a decade after her husbands death, she returned to Warrenton, Virginia, continued to sing in her local church choir, and took up universal health care and local environmental causes until 2002 when she moved to Brandermill Woods in Midlothian. She leaves four children, John B. Paine 3d of Midlothian, Virginia, Thomas M. Paine of Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, Charles J. Paine 2d of Waynesville, North Carolina, and Sarah C. M. Paine of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, seven grandchildren, and one brother, Philip V. Nash of Westerly, Rhode Island. A Memorial Service will take place at 3 PM on Saturday June 8 at the First Parish Church in Weston, Massachusetts. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013 or via Redcross.org.