Therese S Parrish

Therese (Tess) Sellers Parrish, 96, died on Dec.30,2025 in Yarmouth, ME. She was born in Philadelphia PA on October 4, 1929, the daughter of Lester and Therese Sellers of Radnor PA. Her parents, ardent francophiles, were married in Paris in the 1920s. Tess spoke French as a child and was part of the longtime French conversation group in Falmouth. She graduated ln 1947 from the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr PA and from the University of New Hampshire in 1967 with a degree in art education, gaining the skills to teach adults and children ever since.
ln 1949, she married Hugh Morris Parrish of Devon PA, newly commissioned as a lieutenant in the Air Force and was proud to be a military wife until his retirement in 1967. They lived in various places during his career, finally settling in New Castle NH to rear their four children. After retirement, they moved to South Penobscot, Maine and then to Yarmouth in 1993 to be near their extended family.
She always enjoyed music, singing with church choirs and community choruses from her early teens to her late sixties. She took the soprano lead in a series of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas put on in Portsmouth NH in the late 1950s.
She was well-known as a needlewoman, having started to stitch at the age of five and to knit at seven. ln the 1980s, she discovered bobbin lace and took many trips abroad to study the craft. She developed a scanning project to put hundreds of antique and out of print books on lacemaking on the internet, making them widely available to all on line.
She was an active volunteer; introducing countless people to knitting, embroidery, and lacemaking in workshops at schools and the Falmouth Memorial Library. Her interest in historical needlework led to volunteering at Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth NH and repairing antique ecclesiastical vestments for St Johns Church in Portsmouth.
After her husband died of Pick's Disease, she devoted her time and resources to AFTD, the Association for Fronto-temporal Degeneration, to support research into fronto-temporal dementia.
She was predeceased by her husband after 53 years of marriage, and by her first-born daughter, Lucy Therese Parrish, and by her two brothers, Dr Peter Sellers and Brig.Gen. Nicholas Sellers, both of Philadelphia. She is survived by her sister, Anne S Henderson of Lexington VA, and by her children, Susan P Carter and Molly P Whittaker of Yarmouth, Stephanie P de La Rochefoucauld of Paris, France, and Hugh Roberts Parrish of Houston TX, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. For Tess, the family was the focus of her life, her greatest pleasure, and her greatest responsibility.
As did both her brothers, she donated her remains to science continuing her love of teaching by training to a new generation of young doctors. A memorial service and interment will be held at a future date at the Radnor Friends Meeting in lthan, PA.
lf friends or family wish to send memorial contributions in Tess's name, they can be sent to the Merrill Memorial Library, Yarmouth or to the Friends of Sellers Hall, (friendsofsellershall.org) in Upper Darby, PA.