PORTLAND – Rebecca Lacey, 79, passed away unexpectedly at her home on Commercial Street in Portland. She was born Rebecca Elizabeth Tuttle on April 16, 1943, in Shelbyville, Tennessee, where her father Charles Harmon Tuttle was undertaking military training at Camp Forrest before his deployment in World War II.

Both Rebecca’s father, and her mother Hazel Arlene Hunnewell Tuttle, were natives of Maine with deep roots in Portland and South Portland. After the War, the family settled in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where Harmon was an engineer with General Electric. Rebecca’s brother Charles Christopher Tuttle was born in 1948.

Rebecca was brought up in Pittsfield and graduated from Pittsfield High School in 1961. Although she was raised in Massachusetts, Rebecca’s heart belonged to the state of Maine. Throughout her childhood, visits to her cherished Tuttle grandparents in their Bradley Street home in Portland were the highlight of every year.

Rebecca and her family began to spend summers on Peaks Island, where she met a local boy, John “Jack” S. Lacey, who was embarking on a career as an officer in the United States Navy. The pair married in a hurricane at St Christopher’s Church on Peaks Island on Nov. 30, 1963, only eight days after the assassination of President Kennedy. They began the life of a military family, welcoming their daughter Karen Elizabeth in 1964 and John Stephen in 1967, as they moved from port to port, criss-crossing the United States, living in Virginia, California, South Carolina, Alabama, Washington, D.C.

They made their eventual and much-longed-for return to Maine in 1983, living first on Oakhurst Road in Cape Elizabeth, and moving to Peaks Island in 1992. Rebecca and Jack divorced in 1995 and Rebecca began a new chapter of her life.

For more than 20 years Rebecca lived in a remarkable and distinctive apartment in Baxter Place on Commercial Street, and anyone who has visited her will agree that the home she created was like a treasure trove, every corner decorated with art, books, plants and interesting objects.

Her six grandchildren loved visits to “grandmere’s” apartment because there was so much to see. A great reader, she instilled a love of reading and an interest in European culture in her children and then grandchildren. In recent years, she became an avid bird watcher, following the yearly cycle of a family of Ospreys that nest on a platform in the small harbor next to Southern Maine Community College. “Osprey Lane” was her special place and she visited it most days, usually preceded by a trip to her beloved Cookie Jar for a coffee and a chat.

Rebecca was warm and generous and had a network of caring friends who will miss seeing her on her daily routines. She will be so deeply missed by her family, her daughter Karen and son-in-law Joe Holder in London, England, her son John and daughter-in-law Christen in Boston, Massachusetts, and her six grandchildren, Nicholas, Patrick, Brigid, Niamh, Siobhan and Caitlin.

A Celebration of Life will be held for Rebecca at Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth, Maine on Sunday, May 21 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. All friends are welcome. To view Rebecca’s memorial page, or to share an online condolence, please visit http://www.ConroyTullyWalker.com.