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Mallory Rich Obituary
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2 Entries
Richard E. Gower
May 20, 2025
Richard E. Gower
May 20, 2025
05/19/2025
When I think of Mallory Bratton Rich, words that come to mind are: intelligence, generosity, graciousness, kindness, loyalty to her family and friends, and creativity. I also think of her joie de vivre and two of her enthusiasms, fine art and baseball.
I first got to know Mallory and Harry Rich a dozen or so years ago when Mallory and my Wife, Martha Folsom, both served on the board of the Martha Canfield Memorial Library in Arlington. Our friendships grew from there.
I remember two trips the four of us took together, one to Pawtucket, Rhode Island to see the Boston Red Sox (Mallory´s favorite baseball team) farm team, the PawSox, play. It was a boiling hot day and the air conditioning in our car wasn´t working. Such were her grace and good manners that I heard not one complaint about the heat.
A year or so later, we motored to Cooperstown, New York to take in a new art exhibit (Heroines of Abstract Expressionism) at the Fenimore Art Museum. After viewing the marvelous collection of paintings and drawings by the likes of Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Joan Mitchell and many other groundbreaking artists, we then hiked over and toured the Baseball Hall of Fame. With travel, it was a full, grueling twelve-hour day, but Mallory still had a smile on her face when we got back to Vermont that evening.
Getting together with Mallory and Harry over food and drink was always a pleasure, whether that was to test a recommended restaurant, or over drinks and dinner at our houses. Mallory was always open to trying a new food experience but she also enjoyed sitting down to an old favorite. Her preferred martini (at our house anyway) was nine parts Hendricks and one part Noilly Prat.
The great conversations the four of us had about art, literature, writing, philosophy, family, life in general, and yes, politics, will remain burned into my gray matter. She was ever passionate about politics and her hope for a better world remained constant.
And then there was Mallory´s talent as a painter. My favorite work of hers hangs in our house. It is a painting of Harry that she did in oils on canvas. He is sitting in an Adirondack chair in their yard in Sandgate, reading. A ruffed grouse that had become tame as a pet (with no encouragement) and attached itself to him, is perched on the arm of the chair. Mallory is not in that painting of course, because she created it, but I cannot look at it without also thinking of her. She once said of herself and Harry and their respective artistry, "We´re painters for life."
I´d like to think that she is now quietly painting away, in a place without pain.
Richard E. Gower
Arlington, Vermont
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