Emmy Coley

We are heartbroken to announce that Emmy K. Coley died on February 16th from complications after a hip fracture. Born Emma Louisa Kearney on October 1st, 1936 in New York, to Elizabeth Cleaver Kearney and Thomas Kevin Kearney, Emmy's life reflected her indomitable spirit, keen and insatiable intellect and deep caring for the lives of everyone she encountered.

She grew up in Larchmont, NY, and attended Rye Country Day School and then Wellesley College. While in college, she was selected to participate in a summer internship at the United Nations. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and as a Durant Scholar in 1958 with a BA in history. She went on to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, spending the first year of the program in Bologna, Italy, and earned her Masters Degree. She met and married Oliver E. Clubb, Jr. during that time. By 1964 they were living in Delhi, India, with their young children while Oliver, newly on the faculty of Syracuse University, taught at the Maxwell School program abroad. While living in India she fell in love with the music of Ravi Shankar and began taking lessons on the sitar as a creative outlet and way to connect to the culture. After several years back in Syracuse, the family moved to Florence, Italy. Emmy again became deeply connected with the place, worked on her Italian language proficiency and found a U.S. client for whom she selected and purchased Italian furniture.

Oliver and Emmy eventually divorced and Emmy and their three daughters moved to the house in Litchfield that had been left to her by her beloved great aunt, Ethel Patterson Lewis. She taught foreign relations while simultaneously completing her Masters in Social Work at the University of Connecticut, focusing on psychiatric social work. After graduating, Emmy joined the team on the inpatient adolescent psychiatry unit at Yale New Haven Hospital where she had a long and successful career caring for adolescents and their families in crisis while also maintaining a flourishing private practice in family therapy in New Haven and Litchfield. During that time, she met William Bradley Coley, an English professor at Wesleyan University. Together with the children they moved to North Branford to be closer to their jobs and married. Emmy and Bill had many happy years together listening to music, going on long walks in the woods with a series of wonderful Wire-Haired Pointing Griffons and birdwatching in swamps and fields. They eventually moved back to Litchfield. Emmy and Bill were deeply involved in the Jackson Peck Conservancy in Sharon which she worked on and cared deeply about for the rest of her life. Bill died at home in early 2020 after living with dementia for many years during which she cared for him with great dedication while still managing to sustain her intellectual life and her many devoted friendships and care for her three horses, dog and cat.

About a year later, a relationship developed between Emmy and Malcolm Forbes which deeply enriched what should not have been her final three years. They traveled extensively together including touring through Bohemia, Morocco and Italy. They enjoyed opera, orchestral and theatrical performances. Malcolm and Emmy formed a deep love that was a wonderful inspiration to so many in their lives and wove their families together in a way that brought great joy to their children.

During her many years in Litchfield, Emmy was able to develop and sustain incredible friendships with some remarkable people that brought her great joy and fulfillment. She was deeply involved on the board of the Litchfield Community Services Fund for decades. She fed her lifelong love of horses with continuous horse ownership for the last 28 years of her life. She loved the connections that she made with the horses themselves. She loved the amazing people who formed her community of horse sustainers, both at several barns where she boarded and trained them and at her farm, and the friends who shared her love for them. She also relentlessly pursued the life of the mind, taking literature classes with her dear friends for years and absolutely keeping up on current affairs and their implications in light of historical precedent despite needing to do all of her reading in the audio format due to her dramatically worsening vision in her last months.

Emmy was a truly remarkable person. She lived every day of her life with intensity, overcoming obstacles with vigor and panache. It never occurred to us that she would ever be gone. She had extreme emotional intelligence, an incredible mind, and she cared deeply for her friends and community. She got to know people so intensely and with such compassion and held space in her always-eager mind for a memory palace of thoughts and connections that helped her to understand them at a level well beyond normal daily interaction. She had a distinct way of making people feel truly seen and understood. In talking to people about Emmy after her loss, it is striking to hear how many people told us of a lightness and unburdening that they felt after spending time with her. We are all so blessed to have had her in our lives.

She leaves behind her three daughters and their partners, Soni Clubb and Tom Balcezak; Sukoshi Clubb and Sam Adlerstein; Elizabeth Clubb and Allan Keiter; four grandchildren, her niece and nephew, Malcolm and his children and countless dear friends of all ages whose lives she continued to brighten. She is predeceased by her brother, Thomas K. Kearney, her sister Mary Kearney who died in infancy, and her nephew Thomas K. Kearney, Jr.

A celebration of her life will be held at the Milton Public Hall, 538 Milton Road, Litchfield, Connecticut, from 4:30-6:30 on Saturday, March 8th.

Should friends desire, memorial contributions can be made to:

Litchfield Community Services Fund

White Memorial Foundation

Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation