LOIS BROWN SHIPMAN
Lois Brown Shipman of Groton died peacefully on February 23 at the age of ninety-one in the presence of her sons and loved ones in Lawrence and Memorial Hospital, New London. A widow since 1992 after fifty-four year of marriage to Harold Shipman, Lois moved to Connecticut from Chevy Chase, Maryland, where she joined her older son the Reverend Bruce Shipman, then Rector of Christ Church in Roxbury, CT, more recently Vicar of All Saints’ Church in Ivoryton, CT.
Her condominium in Groton was a source of pleasure for the ten and a half years that she lived in Connecticut, and she made many friends in the Groton Heights neighborhood. Lois enjoyed honorary membership in the Ever Ready Ladies Fellowship of the Groton Heights Baptist Church. She acknowledged a particular debt of gratitude to the Bill Memorial Library on Monument Street, where she spent many hours working on The Quest, a spiritual memoir in which her years of travel and life abroad were recalled as outward signs of a deeper journey toward God. The Quest was written entirely from the memories of her life which included living in Turkey and Egypt in the 1950’s, when her husband Harold worked for the World Health Organization, followed by relocation to the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, where she lived until the move to Connecticut.
Always interested in things of the spirit, Lois combined a fine literary intelligence with love of Scripture and service to others. In the late ‘60’s when racial tensions were inflamed in Washington, DC, she and several church friends from the Maryland suburbs established links with inner city families, sending children to summer camp and offering encouragement and material help to many single parent households. She and her husband also sponsored a Cambodian refugee family through their church in the 1970’s.
A native of Minneapolis, Lois met Harold as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. Her love of children and of learning were demonstrated in the years that she taught American history at the Cairo American School in Maadi, Egypt, and served as school librarian.
She is survived by her two sons, Bruce of Groton and Richard of Concord, North Carolina, and her third “adopted son” Hans Stukenbrok of Groton; a granddaughter Kristina of Jacksonville, Florida; a grandson David of St. Michael, Minnesota, and a great grandson, Grant, also of St. Michael, Minnesota.
A Requiem Eucharist will take place at Christ Church, Roxbury, on March 25 – the Feat of the Annunciation – at twelve noon, with committal to follow in the Christ Church columbarium. In lieu of flowers the family invite contributions in Lois’ memory to Christ Church, Roxbury, CT; Center United Methodist Church in Concord, NC; or All Saints’ Church in Ivoryton, Connecticut.
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