Sylvia D Perry

Sylvia Diane (Iris) Perry, 79, of Wareham, MA passed away peacefully on December 23, 2023, with her family by her side. She was born in Brockton, MA on March 1, 1944, to Harvey Rowe Iris and Olive Byron (Fosdick) Iris, the youngest of four children. Preferring her middle name, Sylvia was known to her loved ones as Diane.
Diane spent her childhood going back and forth between Wareham, MA, and Miami, FL. She attended Wareham High School and after graduation, she went on to college at Wesleyan College in GA. She also attended Kathryn Gibbs in RI and later received her paralegal degree from Cape Cod Community College in MA.
Diane was a caring person who lived a varied and interesting life. She was involved in her local community, well-traveled, and put her hand to an array of different tasks and jobs. She came from a large family and produced an even larger one. She loved the holidays, sports, and creative arts such as music, figure skating, and dancing. She loved animals, especially horses, crafting, knitting, sewing, holidays, and parties. She loved books and watching her TV shows, especially if they involved a good murder mystery. And more than anything else she loved her very large family.
As a child, Diane enjoyed both dance and theater. She was involved in her community as a member of the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls and volunteered in the Junior Nurses League as a candy striper at Toby Hospital. Her first job during high school was working for the family-owned Iris Drugstores in Falmouth and Onset MA. Later in life Diane often worked in various secretarial positions. First for Sippican, later for her husband's law firm, and finally for a variety of equestrian organizations throughout New England.
She married Robert L. Perry and as they set out on their new life they first tried their hand at growing cranberries, owning several cranberry bogs in the Cape Cod area. While they worked the cranberry bogs Diane helped her husband through law school and to start up his law firm. During this time Diane had six children, two sons and four daughters, who she raised while simultaneously working alongside her husband. After her marriage, Diane became very involved in many of the local equestrian competitions and organizations in the New England area as she supported her younger daughters in their equestrian passion. She was involved in the planning and running of many competitions both small and large. She worked in the local equestrian industry until her retirement and was well-known and loved in those circles.
Diane loved to travel and was able to do a lot of it despite being such a hard worker and raising such a large family. During her life, she traveled overseas to Europe, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific. She particularly enjoyed Tahiti, the Cayman Islands, and Disney World, often visiting the latter in her motorhome. She enjoyed taking the train to New York to meet her family and tour Manhattan or flying to Tampa Bay to hang out on the beach. And she always traveled during the holidays to visit her children and grandchildren as they spread out across the East Coast.
Her family was the most important thing to her. Even as her family became larger and larger, she treated the birth of each child, grandchild, and great-grandchild as a uniquely significant and important event. If she had survived to see a hundred great-grandchildren born, the hundredth would have been just as important and loved as the first. She would have sacrificed anything she was able to support her children and their children in their happiness and their passions.
And in that love of her children, we can find the warmth of the person these words fail to capture. In the soft glow of Christmas lights and a room filled with the hum of voices and the background of holiday music. Every holiday Diane gathered as much of her family around her as she could. If they could not come to her, she would travel to them. She upheld a strong pattern of holiday traditions, the Christmas tree decorating parties, the candy houses made of graham crackers, and a Christmas dinner always begun with a desert of rainbow sherbert and fruit. Or turn now to a daughter's living room, Diane on the couch with her children sitting beside her and grandchildren playing, the smell of dinner cooking invading the room as Diane yelled and hollered as loud as anyone at the Patriots playing on TV. On a warm summer evening, she would gather up any children at hand to go get an ice cream. Fireworks in the backyard. Hazy early mornings would find Diane in the car, taking someone to the school bus, traveling to a horse show, or leaving to visit her family to celebrate the current life events, whether large or small. She always had a camera or video camera in hand to record all the moments, the holidays, the school plays, the weddings, and birthdays. Every moment spent with her family were precious moments she recorded so she never had to let them go. And in these moments you can hear her laughter. A laugh you could never forget. And in these moments you can feel her love, her love of her children, and their children, and the time spent together.
Diane is predeceased by her parents, Harvey R. and Olive B. Iris, her brother Harvey R. Iris II, Her sisters Judith Gilbert and Mollie Traggis, daughter-in-law Bridgette Iris, and her son Robert L. Perry III. She is survived by her son Jonathan Iris and her four daughters Kathryn Perry, Michelle Berube and her husband Tim, Margaret Perry and her husband Rick, and Stephanie Perry and her husband Chris, her grandchildren Elizabeth, Amanda, Danielle, Brittany, Genevieve, Courtnee, Benjamin, Spencer, Diane, Jonathan, Timothy, Alyssa, Devon, Aiden, Gabriella, Tucker, and Christian, and great-grandchildren Landon, Sophia, Ava, Tanner, Penelope, Olivia, Beatrix, Oliver, Lilly, Elvis, Emery, Owen, Jasper, and Eleanor.
Visiting hours will be held on Thursday, January 11, 2024, from 4:00-7:00 pm in the Magoun-Biggins Funeral Home, 135 Union Street, Rockland, MA. A Funeral Service will be held in the St. Peter's Church on the Canal, 165 Main St, Buzzards Bay, MA on Friday, January 12, 2024, at 11:00 AM. Burial will follow the Funeral services in the Melrose Cemetery, 88 North Pearl St, Brockton, MA.