Antonia Plehn "Toni" Lake

1939 - 2025

Worthington, MA - Antonia (Toni) Plehn Lake died peacefully on June 5, 2025, a sunny summer morning, in the beautiful home she'd designed for herself in Worthington, Mass. She was 85.

Toni had a rich and varied life. As a poet, she crafted spare, lyrical pieces evoking the natural world she loved. As a music teacher, she shared her joy of music with children and taught them the beauty of folk harmonies. As a film photographer, she composed sensitive black-and-white portraits of people and nature. As a farmer, she raised horses and Australian shepherds and made hay and maple syrup. As a mother, she raised three children into successful and caring adults—and she delighted in her six grandchildren.

Toni reveled in her many friendships. She was deeply loyal and kind, and she blessed her friends with good humor, a wonderful laugh, and a fierce sense for what matters in life. Her friends knew that, while she might tolerate fools with grace, she never encouraged them. "She was a good woman to know," says her friend Becky Okrent—"strong, forthright... sympathetic, yet intolerant of all the right things."

Born in 1939 and raised in Litchfield, Conn., as a teenager Toni attended Miss Hall's School in Pittsfield, Mass. She went on to Radcliffe, where she studied history. While in college she met her future husband, Anthony Lake, who was attending Harvard. The two married in 1962. The next year, Toni Lake and Tony Lake (yes, the names would cause some confusion over the years) moved to Saigon, where Tony had been assigned as a foreign service officer. In Saigon, Toni learned Vietnamese, taught English, and in 1964 gave birth to their first child, Tim. While pregnant she'd endured dengue fever and, during the 1963 coup against Ngo Dinh Diem, hid in a closet for 12 hours with Tony, as shrapnel flew against the walls of their house. In 1965 the U.S. sent troops to the war, and she and Tim were the first civilian Americans to be evacuated from the country; she was interviewed about her experience on the Today Show.

In the 1970s, Toni and Tony settled in Washington, D.C. Toni raised their three children, taught music to elementary-school children, and pursued her lifelong love of nature and animals. She and Tony bought land and later an adjacent farmhouse in West Virginia farm country. The family spent weekends and summers there; the house had no running water and a party-line phone; they raised pasture-fed cattle and provided beef for family friends in D.C.; swam in the pond, played games and music, and rode horses along the area's dirt backroads.

During these years, Toni was politically active: Early on in D.C., she had protested the Vietnam War (even as her husband worked inside a White House that was waging that war), and in the '70s, with her friend Anne Rigby, she advocated against the closure of a D.C. public school and worked to advance equitable access to education for all children.

In 1981 the family moved to Kinne Brook Farm in Worthington, Mass. Toni was happy to leave "the political noisiness of D.C.," Anne says. At the farm, Toni and Tony continued to raise beef cattle, and Toni filled the barn with her horses and the kennels with dogs. She improved the farm's 1806 farmhouse, cultivated vegetable and flower gardens, mucked stalls, and threw a lot of hay bales.

In the mid-1990s, Toni and Tony divorced. After living for a time in D.C. and working for Drug Strategies, a non-profit organization, Toni returned to the farm. She worked hard to keep it going and in good shape, and continued to raise her beloved horses and dogs. She competed in horse shows and events—and later, with her dogs, in agility meets and dog shows; she made dear friends along the way. She also immersed herself in poetry: In 2008 she earned her MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and would go on to produce a book of poems, Country Music. She joined the Hilltowns poetry group, which became deeply important in her life.

As Toni aged, she wanted to simplify her life, and she sold the farm to her daughter Eliza. Across the road from the farm, on a grassy hill, she built her dream home, an airy and light-filled house with a wraparound porch. She formed a decade-long relationship with another western Mass. poet, Wil Hastings, a retired lawyer. She and Wil were active and beloved members of the West Cummington (Mass.) Church, where Toni served as treasurer and loved singing in the choir. She and Wil led the revival of an area literary journal (Stone Walls) and were both active in land conservation. Wil passed away in 2023.

With the help of her children, Toni realized her wish to spend her late life at home, and to die there. She had developed Alzheimer's and was fortunate to receive good care from homecare workers and family.

Her loved ones cherish memories of gatherings at her house—eating good food on the screen porch, reveling in the natural world around them, singing and playing instruments, telling stories and laughing together. They will miss her dearly. She leaves her sister, Susan Crofut; her sister-in-law Harriet Marple Plehn; her three children, Tim Lake, Nell Lake, and Eliza Lake; her daughter-in-law, Dana Flower Lake; her sons-in-law Doug Winsor and Bart Niswonger; six grandchildren—Alex and Ethan Lake; Galen and Jordy Winsor; Augustus and Charlotte Niswonger—and five nieces and a nephew. She was predeceased by her brother, Steffen Plehn.

A memorial celebration will be held on September 13, 2025 at 1 pm at the West Cummington Church in West Cummington, Mass. A reception will follow in the Parish House. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to It Takes a Village (hilltownvillage.org) and/or the Hilltown Land Trust (hilltownlandtrust.org).