Lois Hinckley

VIENNA – Lois Vivian Hinckley passed away Oct. 18, 2022. She was born Dec. 23, 1943, into a family of voracious readers and fine and frequent writers with a strong commitment to public betterment, particularly through the teaching profession, Lois built well on that tradition. She grew up in Wellesley, Mass., graduated from Dana Hall School and Wellesley College, and earned her Ph.D in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lois taught at Dana Hall, Princeton University, West Virginia University and the University of Southern Maine (USM), where she helped build USM’s Honors Program. Wherever she taught, she put teaching and students first. Her creatively designed courses, particularly on mythology, drew praise, affection and, often, long term friendships with many former students.

Lois’s special passions were for Homer and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. She firmly believed that the Classics, and Homer in particular, had much that can help us live our everyday lives well. She leaves behind a book manuscript exploring those insights.
Wherever academic life took her, Lois also brought along her guitar, and a beautiful singing voice. Inspired by the Folk Revival of the early 1960s, she wrote her own songs, in a genre she called “Academic Folk,” several of which she brought together on a CD entitled “Sports Car Lady with a Station Wagon Life,” a collection which gained a considerable word-of-mouth audience. She was also ready to cover a wide variety of tunes wherever she performed, whether at Princeton’s Alchemist and Barrister restaurant, Christmas Fairs, an Open Mike evening, or gatherings with family, friends, or other musicians. In those settings, and on her CD, she often appeared as Jenny, or Jenny Lois, derived from a stage name, Jenny Rivers, used early in her singing career. Many friends came to know her principally as Jenny or Jenny Lois or Hinckley, or, in the case of her McCarthy step-grandchildren, “Grandma Jenny.” By whatever name, she was the same generous, thoughtful and imaginative person.

One outcome of a Danforth Foundation grant based on Lois’s commitment to excellence in teaching was a long and happy relationship with Danforth Associates of New York, whose semi-annual meetings she attended, as usual fostering lasting friendships based on her participation in thoughtful discussions and, especially, her leadership of Saturday night sing-alongs.

Jenny-Lois was a creative and giving person. As a member of Vienna, Maine’s Mill Stream Grange, she summoned up old piano skills to provide accompaniment for Grange events and ceremonies. Likewise, she served as a listener-engaging lector at St. Matthew and St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Hallowell, Maine, and participated in American Indian rituals led by sister-in-law Priscilla Hinckley. None of this lessened her admiration for the faith of her youth, the Church of the New Jerusalem based on the philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg. Her father, Edward B. Hinckley, for some years President of Babson Institute, was also a Minister of the Swedenborgian Church.

Lois sought and found community and did her part to make it better. She will be remembered with love by numerous friends, former students and colleagues, not least by loyal friend and adopted sister Barbara Cates, who visited and sang with Jenny-Lois with singular consistency in her last dementia-afflicted two years of life. She will also live on in memory for her husband of 20 years, Ed McCarthy, sister Marjorie Kelly, sister-in-law Priscilla Hinckley; nephew Kee Hinckley; grandnieces Shireen Hinckley and Shadi Fotouhi; cousin Elizabeth (Skee) Morton, Skee’s son Ken, and McCarthy stepchildren, Eileen, Edward Jr., Maire and Kristin; as well as the aforementioned step-grandchildren. Her much loved and admired brother, Edward C. Hinckley, who served as Maine’s first Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and later played a leading role in the State’s program for Infant Mental Health, predeceased her, as did her parents, Dorothy Kuenzli Hinckley and Edward B. Hinckley.

Memorial observances are planned at Memorial Episcopal Church in Baltimore on Nov. 26 and later in Maine. As Lois wished, her ashes will be scattered at the Sandy Neck Lighthouse on Cape Cod where she spent her summers from childhood through most of her life, and where her father’s ashes were also scattered.
Both Lois and her brother Edward endured dementia-type illnesses.

Contributions to the Alzheimer’s Association, the Dementia Society of America or similar organizations doing research on dementia would therefore be very appropriate

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