Idolene “Ivy” Darrow

PUTNEY -- Idolene “Ivy” Darrow, 80, died at home in Putney early Sunday morning, Nov. 28, 2004.

She lived in Putney and was the wife of William H. Darrow Jr. for 58 years.

She was the mother of Steven, Nathan, Matthew, William and Evan Darrow. She was the sister of Eva Maria Ladd of Rhode Island, Manfred Hegemann of Putney, and Elinor Lasell Taylor, who lives in Mexico.

Mrs. Darrow was the daughter of Ida Belle Hegemann, who died in Putney in 1983. She was born Lillith Idolene Hegemann in Berlin, Germany, in January 1924.

Her father Werner Hegemann, a city planner and political historical writer, fled Germany with his family in March 1933, upon publishing a book critical of Hitler.

After a stay in Switzerland and France, the family moved to New York in the fall of 1933, where Werner Hegemann was offered positions teaching city planning at the New School for Social Research and Columbia University.

Following her father's premature death in 1936, her mother took up teaching and moved her young family to Massachusetts.

In 1941, she took a teaching position at the short-lived Hickory Ridge School and bought a home in Putney.

She graduated from Bennington College in 1945.

In September 1945, she began studies in the first class at Harvard Medical School that accepted women. During the summer of 1947, she met William Darrow Jr. of Putney, recently returned from service in the U.S. Air Force to take over his father, William Darrow Sr.'s apple farm, the Green Mountain Orchards in Putney.

Dropping out of medical school, she married Mr. Darrow in the fall of 1947. Between 1949 and 1956 she gave birth to her five children. She raised them while helping her husband on the farm by handling the books and payroll.

During the 1960s and 1970s, she also worked as librarian at the Putney Central School and the Antioch Putney Graduate School, and helped start both the Putney Town Library and the Putney Day Care.

She was very close to her mother, visiting her daily and traveling with her frequently as Mrs. Darrow provided guided tours to Europe and the Mediterranean.

She wrote a culinary column for the Brattleboro Reformer for several years in the 1980s, when she also made and sold chocolate apples to New England vendors.

During the 1980s and 1990s she and her husband retired, moving to a house they built in Putney on a hill overlooking the orchard and a southern Vermont panorama. The couple travelled extensively from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. From 1974 to 2004 they spent almost every winter on beaches in Mexico. During the last two decades, she took great pleasure in her grandchildren.

Mrs. Darrow enjoyed a lifelong love of books, particularly history books, as well as travel, music, and her family.

She is survived by her husband, her five sons, her three siblings, and nine grandchildren, Lara, Casey, and Robin Darrow of Putney, Sonya, Emily, Elsa, and Eric Darrow of Schuylerville, N.Y.; and Anna and Katherine Darrow of Burlington.

A memorial will be held at the United Church of Putney at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2004.u