BIDDEFORD POOL — Ann Stickney Lindsay, died on January 16, 2019, at Edgewood Retirement Community in North Andover, Massachusetts. She was 100 years old.
She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 16, 1918, to Eleanor (nee Dozier) and Stuart Stickney.
Her father was the treasurer for the Stickney Hoelscher Cigar Company and her maternal grandfather ran a baking company that eventually became Nabisco.
She attended the Rossman School in St. Louis. In 1930 she moved with her mother and stepfather to New York City. She graduated from the Nightingale-Bamford School, then spent a year at Miss Child’s Graduate House in Florence, Italy. She later attended the Traphagen School of Design in New York, where she produced intricate and beautiful drawings for her fashion design courses.
In 1941, Ann and two friends ran the Weekend Bookshop on Madison Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. A March 1942 story in the St. Louis Post Dispatch describes Ann deftly handling a shoplifter: “(Miss Stickney) had to run after a woman who slipped out the door with three expensive books. Miss Stickney caught up with her on Madison and retrieved the books after asking if the woman wouldn’t like them wrapped.”
On June 3, 1944, she married Peter McNair Lindsay, a Navy lieutenant, in Manhattan, during a wartime leave. They had met as babies in St. Louis and both their families summered in Biddeford Pool, Maine. In fact, Ann’s mother had been a bridesmaid in Peter’s parents’ wedding there in 1916.
They spent all their summers and most of their later years in that same Maine village, where they had lifelong friends spanning generations.
After the war, Ann and Peter saw the world in two-year increments, courtesy of the Navy, as they were stationed in Newport, Rhode Island; Yokosuka, Japan; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. they left the Navy and settled in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts.
Ann was a voracious reader, a mushroom hunter and an avid craftsperson. Her crafts included needlepoint, knitting, sewing, and making terrariums. She was a great gardener, a gifted artist, and painter.
But most of all, Ann hooked rugs she designed herself. She and a group of Beverly Farms women met weekly for years, calling themselves the “happy hookers.”
She loved to travel and spend time with her many friends. She was a snappy dresser with great style. She had a keen sense of humor and a sharp tongue. Her grandchildren kept a secret notebook of “Grandma’s Best Lines,” none of which can be repeated here.
She was open minded and easily adjusted to modern times. When invited to her first same-sex wedding she insisted “Someone must get me to the wedding, I don’t want them to think I disapprove!” and then added “and I’m dying to see what the brides will wear.”
She was delighted by her 100th birthday party this past summer in Maine which was attended by more than 100 of her friends and family.
She was predeceased by: her husband, Peter; and daughter, Susan; and is survived by: two sons, Andrew and wife Jan Lindsay of Ipswich, Massachusetts, and Peter and wife Kate Binzen of Decatur, Georgia. Also survived by: four grandchildren, Jackson, Barbara, Jacob and Claire; and a great-grandson, Benjamin. She is also survived by her beloved nephew, Webster Tilton.
Private services will be held this summer in Maine. Arrangements by the Campbell Funeral Home, 525 Cabot St., Beverly, Massachusetts. In lieu of flowers, please consider donations to the Lawrence General Hospital and Essex County Greenbelt.
Online condolences at www.campbellfuneral.com
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