Gail Frances Coffman

Gail Frances Coffman
Atlanta, GA
Gail Frances Coffman lived vibrantly for 82 years getting up early, working hard, walking every day and shocking doctors by not needing a single pill. She died two years later on October 30, 2020 from lung cancer, which no pill can cure.
Gail was born in Barberton, Ohio to John and Elizabeth Agnes (Marr) Judge. She graduated from the School of the Holy Child Jesus, Suffern, NY in 1954. She won so many book awards that we have a shelf devoted to them. She also must have set a record for most choir memberships. They were small choirs, to be sure, but they traveled around the New York area winning competitions against much larger schools. Gail loved an underdog and reveled in those early victories! She graduated from Trinity College in Washington, DC in 1958 and headed to Wall Street, where she worked as a group manager in investment services at Merrill Lynch and lived in Greenwich Village. She enjoyed the scene in the Village, where, invited out to a bar late on an August work night , she met Frederic S. Coffman, Jr., a securities analyst. Fred was thirty and knew a great partner when he saw one. He proposed in October, and they were married February 10, 1962 in London, Ontario.
Gail and Fred had two children in five years, Peter D. Coffman (of Atlanta) and Margaret Coffman Mantione (of Winter Park, Florida). After sixteen years in Westfield, NJ, the Coffmans moved first to Neenah, Wisconsin and later to Las Colinas, Texas for Fred's work with Kimberly Clark. While in Texas, Fred decided to retire. They built a new, strikingly modern home overlooking the salt marshes of the The Landings on Skidaway Island in Savannah, Georgia. They lived happily there together for thirty years, watching the sun rise over the marsh and hammocks and the golfers trying to keep drives in the fairway on the 15th hole of the Plantation course. Fred died in 2015, and in 2019, Gail moved to Atlanta to be near Peter and his family.
Gail and Fred's passion in retirement was travel. Gail planned all their excursions, researching for weeks, first in books and later on the internet. She loved to learn enough of the local language to make inquiries about particular hotels or restaurants on the phone or email. She was never content just to take a guidebook's word for it! Their most frequent stop was London, but they traveled all over Europe, from Portugal to Norway to Croatia. They also sailed from New Zealand to Los Angeles, stopping at numerous exotic islands along the way.
Gail spent decades in volunteer work. Her drive, vision and organizational skills propelled her to lead and expand every organization she joined. She was President of the Mobile Meals of Westfield, NJ; President of the Neenah Historical Society and President of the Bergstrom Museum, both in Neenah, Wisconsin; and Founder and President of the Village Library in Savannah, which she helped expand from 500 volumes in a large closet to 25,000 volumes in a beautiful, airy building on a pond. She volunteered there for thirty years. Gail read several books a week throughout her life, so one can imagine how many of those 25,000 volumes she read herself.
Gail was above all a caring person of boundless energy and ideas. As a young mother, she entertained her very young children with elaborate morning recitals of her imaginary exploits the night before as a benign witch, organized trips to New York City to see the sights, and kept her children busy with board games and lots of good books on rainy days. "Demma" adored her five grandchildren, Sophie Elizabeth, Tyler Cole, Emma Virginia, Faith Mary Margaret and Clare Frances Coffman. She and Fred hosted each grandchild at "grandparents camp" on Skidaway, where they could bond with each of them one on one.
All of us will remember her most vividly, however, as a cook and hostess. Every meal for Gail was an opportunity to bring people together and really enjoy the gustatory and social sides of dining. When we visited, there was a typed menu on the refrigerator for every meal – nothing was left to chance. For years after she and Fred moved to The Landings, they hosted a large Independence Day party at their house, with the best Texas barbeque outside the Lone Star State. Days of preparation went into the food for those parties, every bit of which she prepared from scratch. Pastries and dessert were her special love and the summit of her expertise. She shared her skills by teaching her children and grandchildren recipes they loved. Demma had many ways of showing us that she loved us, but a well-planned, thoughtful and perfectly prepared meal under candlelight was right up there.
Gail was predeceased by her brother, John Daniel Judge, Jr. She leaves behind her children, Peter and Maggie, her sister-in law, Pauline B. Judge, her daughter-in-law, Mary Virginia Weinmann Coffman, her son-in-law, John Mantione, and her grandchildren. We will all miss her terribly, remembering her laugh, her intellect, her energy, and her love.
Memorials donations can be sent to The St. Vincent DePaul Society of Georgia, 2050-C Chamblee Tucker Road, Atlanta, GA 30341. A private funeral mass will be said at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church, Brookhaven, Georgia on Monday November 2nd.
Savannah Morning News
November 1, 2020
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