Robert Cope

1935 - 2019

Robert DeNormandie Cope

Portland, Maine - Robert DeNormandie Cope died on Tuesday, August 13, at Maine Medical Center surrounded by his family. He was 84 and had lived with progressive dementia for more than 10 years. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1935, he was the son of Oliver and Alice DeNormandie Cope. He grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the Second World War, where his surgeon father, a Quaker, remained at Massachusetts General Hospital advancing surgical care and his mother was one of the founders of the Window Shop, which provided employment and social services to refugee families. In 1940, Robert and his sister, at the age of 5 and 3, were joined by the sons of English friends, also 5 and 3, who were evacuated from London. Their five years together as children became a lasting bond between the Cope and Himsworth families.

Cope attended Shady Hill, the Fenn School and Milton Academy. At the age of 17, he went off to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he met his wife Margaret the first week and obtained a degree in agronomy. They married after their junior year, and after graduation, moved to Texas where Robert spent three years in the Air Force and then returned to Cambridge to attend Harvard Law School. In 1962, they moved to Worcester with their young family, where Robert practiced corporate law for forty years and devoted himself to the Worcester community, serving on numerous boards, but most happily on the board of the Bancroft School where he could keep a close eye on his children.

In 1986, he bought a herd of Jersey cows and went in search of a dairy farm, ending up on the Connecticut River in Bath, New Hampshire, to which the Cope family moved over time and from which Robert continued to practice law remotely until his retirement. As in Worcester, Robert cared deeply about his new community, serving on the planning board and as a Bath selectman.

In 2014, faced with the challenges of memory loss and with two children in the Portland area, the Copes moved to Falmouth, where Robert's friendly smile continued to draw people into his orbit. He leaves his wife of 64 years, Margaret Gruenewald Cope; his son Oliver and his wife Hillary Johnson and their daughters, Hannah and Sarah; his daughter Eliza Cope Nolan and her three children, Oliver, Robert and Sophia; his son Thomas and his wife Kathryn; Tom's son, Benjamin; his sister Eliza Cope Harrison and his nieces Abigail and Emily; the Himsworths and the extended DeNormandie and Cope families.

Contributions may be made in Robert's memory to the Alzheimer's Association (alz.org)