KATHARINE MERCK

MERCK--Katharine Evarts. July 24, 1923 to April 11, 2020. Kate Merck died peacefully on April 11 at Brookhaven in Lexington, MA where she and her late husband, Albert W. Merck had lived since 1998. The previous forty-six years had been in their home in Mendham, New Jersey. Mr. Merck died in 2014. Born July 24, 1923, the daughter of Jeremiah and Katharine Evarts, a descendent of Roger Sherman and former United States Attorney General William M. Evarts, Kate grew up with four siblings on her family's farm near Windsor, Vermont. Kate's childhood on the farm marked her character deeply. Her love of nature and affinity for animals would become a consistent theme in her art and everyday life. Letters written to children away from home would typically describe fall colors, the return of spring peepers, or a muskrat sighting. At the age of sixteen when her parents divorced, Kate left Vermont to attend the Brearley School in New York City and Bennington College where she managed the college's farm for the war effort and was a student of Erich Fromm. She later became a Bennington Trustee. In 1946 Kate married Albert W. Merck. The couple remained together, usually hand in hand, for 68 years. Initially Mr. Merck's job took them to St. Louis and then to New Jersey where, in 1952, they built a home and settled in the wooded hills near Mendham. During the 1950's Kate raised her family of five, volunteered nursing at the Greystone Psychiatric Hospital, participated in weekly "Thanatopsis", a book and discussion group of women friends, and hosted numerous social events common for the period. Her oldest child, Kathy, died tragically in 1961 at the age of thirteen. Throughout her life, Kate adhered to Christian faith and carried on the Evarts family's long tradition of civic engagement. As with her abolitionist and suffragist forbears, she acted on behalf of those in need, campaigning tirelessly for social justice. During the 1960s Kate raised money and consciousness among her wide array of friends and neighbors on behalf of the NAACP and Fair Housing. With the encouragement of her cousin Archibald Cox, Kate became a founding member of Common Cause and in 1975 founded Plaid House, a home for teenage girls from troubled homes in NJ that operates to this day. Devoted as she was to activism, Kate was fundamentally an artist. As a child she created preternaturally adept drawings and clay sculptures of farm animals. Later, in her studio in Mendham, she became a prolific sculptor despite all the competing activities of her busy life. Kate is survived by her children, Al, Friedrike, Patience and Wil, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Her family and her many friends and acquaintances will remember her kindness, her compassion, her forthright manner, and her love for all of humanity.