Christine Lewis Cole died on Nov. 21, 2013, attempting to live consciously and fully right up to the end of her life. Born in Pittsburgh, Pa., in April 1941, Chris was the daughter of Harriet and William C. Lewis. Her family moved to Coral Gables, Fla., in 1952. Chris did not relate to being a Southerner. She went to Lasell Junior College in Auburndale, Mass., and then to Pennsylvania State University. An English major, she eventually taught in a ghetto high school during the Civil Rights Era and obtained a master’s degree in human behavior at the U.S. International University in San Diego, Calif., in 1969.
By then enormous social changes were sweeping the consciousness of the young, and Chris was swept up. She met and married James F. Clark, and together they developed a custom shoesandal moccasin- making business in Solana Beach, Calif. Then, hearing the call of the back-to-the-land movement, they moved to Sedgwick, Maine, and settled on property that had been in Chris’s family for seven generations. In 1976 the marriage ended. Chris has been single since and a dedicated Mainer. She completed the restoration of the house first occupied by her great-great-grandparents and wrote “The Make-It- Yourself Shoe Book,” published by Knopf in 1977.
In 1980 Chris moved to Santa Fe, N.M., where she painted houses and studied feminism and spirituality. It was a rich fertile time in America. Returning to Sedgwick in 1986, she started to pursue a Ph.D. in transpersonal psychology. She also began a counseling practice in Blue Hill, which lasted until 1996, when she sold the old family homestead and moved to Topsham on the Androscoggin River. Here she counseled and created drums and rustic furniture. She performed energy audits and publicized the threat of invasive insects. She was a founding member of the Topsham Tree Committee. She loved gardening and to the end enjoyed a large, organic garden full of vegetables.
Although health, sobriety, and Buddhist spirituality were primary focuses in her life, she did not enjoy good health toward the end. She died of ovarian cancer, but she died healed and happy and relishing each new moment as it came along. She leaves a treasure trove of rustic cedar branches, in addition to a house full of her own creations. She also leaves a magnificent group of friends acquired over her lifetime and sends them the deep love she felt for each of them.
She is survived by her brother, Bill Lewis of Miami, Fla., several cousins and two nieces: Gail Lewis Douthat of Richmond, Va., and her children, Jim and Caroline; and Elizabeth Walker Rabjohns of Fairport, N.Y., and her daughters, Virginia and Alexandra.
A memorial gathering in celebration of Chris’s life, followed by a reception, will take place at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 15 at the Coleman Burke Gallery in Fort Andross, 14 Maine St., Brunswick, Maine. Gifts in memory of Chris may be made to the Town of Topsham Tree Committee, c/o Town Planner, 100 Main St., Topsham, ME 04086.
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