Angela E. Fraley Foshay

1924 - 2022

Angela E. Fraley Foshay

Rowe, MA — Angela Eunice Fraley Foshay, known as Ann, died peacefully at the home of her friend and caregiver Rita Gray-Lively in Heath, Massachusetts on April 28, 2022.

Born January 9, 1924 in San Francisco, Ann was the youngest of three children of Ferdinand Miguel Fraley and Marion Louise Sopher. She spent her early years in Oakland and Piedmont, California, and graduated from the University of California-Berkeley in 1945. Shortly after graduating, she traveled to postwar Europe to work for US Government aid programs. After returning from Europe she moved to New York City, which became her home for four decades. Always interested in education, Ann worked as an elementary school teacher, among other jobs, and finally enrolled in the doctoral program in education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she received her PhD in 1977. Her dissertation was later published as Schooling and Innovation: The Rhetoric and the Reality (Tyler-Gibson, 1981).

While at Teachers College, Ann became close friends with Dr. Arthur Wellesley Foshay and his wife Finette Partridge Foshay, who divided their time between New York and the tiny town of Rowe, Massachusetts, deep in the northern Berkshires on the Vermont border. After Finette died unexpectedly, Wells Foshay (as he was known) proposed to Ann, and they were married in 1982. Ann moved with Wells to Rowe, and, although she had never had children of her own, she immediately became "Grandma Ann" to Wells and Finette's grandchildren, who spent many summer weeks visiting Rowe through the 1980s. A devoted baker and spry homemaker, Ann believed that children thrived on a diet of homemade apple pie and "wicked chocolate ice cream," a recipe of her own creation that has never been replicated—fortunately for the health of her surviving family.

Ann remained Wells's devoted partner until he died at the age of 86 in 1998, and she continued living in Rowe and in apartments they purchased together, first in Boston and later in New York City. A civic-minded member of the community, she served on the Rowe Board of Health and in a variety of other unofficial capacities in the town, and she often opened her home on Ford Hill Road for community events.

In her later years, Ann was cared for by Sheila Litchfield, Rita Gray-Lively, and Wanda and John Musacchio, who became her surrogate family, since none of her stepchildren and grandchildren lived nearby. A fiercely independent woman who was proud to have supported herself from a young age, she was nonetheless grateful to her friends who stood by her as her health and mobility gradually declined.

Along with her parents and husband, Ann was preceded in death by her brothers William and Leland Fraley. She is survived by her nieces Ingrid and Carine Fraley and Nina Fraley Neill; nephews Miguel and William K. Fraley; stepchildren Rob and Miriam Foshay and Constance Row; step-grandchildren Jess Row, Sonya Posmentier, Seth Row, Marti Long, Elisa Foshay, Elena and Michelle Hughes Foshay; and step-great-grandchildren Piper, Elise, Mina, Asa, Aiko, Charles, and Leo, as well as her lifelong friends Marie and Carrie Tai, who she considered part of her family.

A private memorial service will be held at her home on May 22, 2022, followed by the burial of her ashes next to Wells Foshay in the Rowe Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, contributions are requested to the Town of Rowe Fire Department, 4 Sibley Road

Rowe, MA 01367.