FREEPORT – Barbara Fogg had determination, no matter what she was doing.

When her children began planning their own family ski trips to The Balsams in Dixville Notch, N.H., she decided to learn to ski.

After all, when she was in her mid-50s, she wasn’t willing to just sit around the lodge while her children enjoyed the outdoors, said her daughter Robyn Peskovitz.

“She wanted to join in the fun and activity with all of us,” she said, and she had water-skied and cross-country skied in the past.

She skied through her mid-60s, taking her last trip down the mountain laughing all the way.

“She had a bad hip, so a couple of Ski Patrollers had to help her down. She wanted to get off the sled halfway down the mountain and walk down. She didn’t want us to see her on the sled,” Peskovitz said.

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Mrs. Fogg died Monday. She was 82.

She was raised on Wolfe Neck in Freeport, and was proud to see a fifth generation living on the property her grandfather bought in 1890. Her daughter Gloria DeGrandpre now owns the land, and DeGrandpre’s daughters are the fifth generation to live there.

“She loved being here on Wolfe Neck,” DeGrandpre said. “Mom was just so pleased about the family heritage.”

With five daughters, her family was very important to her. Every weekend when the girls were young, the family found something to do together. During the summer, that meant trips around Casco Bay on the family boat, “Five Sisters.”

“We’d go out to the islands and have picnics or go camping,” Peskovitz said. They have many memories of fishing and waterskiing off the boat as well.

If she wasn’t enjoying the outdoors with her family, Mrs. Fogg was behind her sewing machine, making something for someone in her family, said her daughter Brenda Skillin.

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The girls never started school without new dresses that she had sewn. Mrs. Fogg also made their prom and wedding dresses.

Even during the six to eight weeks of the year when Mrs. Fogg and her husband, Edwin, traveled the country in their motor home, she took her sewing machine along. On one of those trips, Skillin said, her mother set out to make 10 quilts in 10 months.

“They were log cabin and around-the-world patterns, all full-sized quilts that she made,” she said.

Mrs. Fogg was always protective of her children, Skillin said, and she taught them a lot by how she lived her life.

“She was always encouraging us to follow our dreams and enjoy the simple things in life,” Peskovitz said.

“She taught us so much about love of nature and just being strong,” DeGrandpre said, “paying attention to what we were supposed to be doing and working hard.”

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Staff Writer Emma Bouthillette can be contacted at 791-6325 or at:

ebouthillette@pressherald.com

 


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