Christine Allen

1935 - 2022

Christine Allen
February 9, 1935 - May 27, 2022
Miami, Florida - Anne Christine Allen died peacefully at home in Miami, on May 27th, 2022, surrounded by family. She was born in 1935, in Chicago, to Dorothy D. Eweson and Philip E. Allen. Raised in New York City, she attended The Brearley School and Foxcroft, followed by the University of Geneva and Radcliffe College (class of 1956).
An explorer and an iconoclast from an early age, Christine lived life to the fullest. Her voracious appetite for adventure took her around the globe, aided by versatility in French, German and Hebrew. She loved the world with breadth and intensity – the mono no aware aesthetic of Japan, the arctic climes of the north and south poles, the Eastern Orthodox communities of Georgia, the townships and wilds of Eastern and Southern Africa, the steppes of Siberia, and the ancient Persian sites of Iran. She climbed the difficult north face of the Matterhorn, went horse trekking in Mongolia, and participated in architectural digs in the Sinai. She was an avid snorkeler and skin diver, swimming with marine life from the Great Barrier Reef to the Seychelles, Tonga, Tahiti, Fiji, Hawaii, and the Florida Keys. She spent almost every summer in Maine with family, and resided at various times in New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Florida. For more than a decade, she lived in the west of Ireland, where she rode Irish sport horses and Connemaras, designed and built her own home, and was Joint Master of the Galway Blazers (1986-1994).
A pilot, foxhunter, sailor, skier, and an early adopter of hang-gliding, Christine possessed courage and athletic grace in abundance, but cultivated the life of the mind and her friendships with even greater energy. Her catholic love of art, music, literature, geometry, physics, biology, and philosophy blazed brightly. She was a longtime patron of New York's Jupiter Symphony, hosted shows for artists from Georgia and South Africa, and supported the Frost Museum of Science in Miami. She read constantly and maintained a vast correspondence with family and friends all over the world; her letters and emails – lyrical, observant, trenchant, and mischievously funny – were a delight to all who knew her. Never afraid to speak frankly, she was also immensely generous with her time, resources, and insights. Always ahead of her time, Christine will be greatly missed.
Christine is survived by her brothers, Philip and Douglas Allen, and by her children Martin Zetterberg, Anne Zetterberg, Dorothy Echodu, and Ted Caplow, and by twelve grandchildren. She was predeceased by her eldest son, David Peipers; and by her husbands, Harald Peipers, Hans Zetterberg, and Theodore Caplow. A memorial service will be held at Van Orsdel Funeral Home Coral Gables, 4600 SW 8th Street, Miami at 11 am, Saturday, June 4th.