Maureen Shea Blais, born on May 1, 1913, died Sunday at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London, Ct. after a short illness.
Daughter of the late Dr. Michael I. Shea, former mayor of Chicopee, and Madeleine Mahony Shea, she attended Chicopee High School and Bridgewater State College, graduating in 1934.
Her husband, Dr. Raymond Blais, died in 1952. She was the mother of Madeleine Blais and her husband John Katzenbach of Amherst, Mass., Jacqueline Blais of Alexandria, Va., Christina Blais Rodgers of Noank, Ct., Maureen Klein and her husband Dennis Klein of Noank, Ct. and Michael Blais and his wife Kate Blais of Madison, Ct., and was predeceased by her oldest child, Raymond, in 1998. She leaves a brother Dermot Shea of Boston and a sister Eileen Walsh and her husband Joseph and their son Stephen Walsh of Falls Church, Va. She leaves six grandchildren: Robert and Andrew Rodgers, Nicholas and Justine Katzenbach, and Christopher and Gregory Klein. She lived most of her life in the Pioneer Valley where she was a member of the Granby Public Library Board of Trustees for 22 years, including head of the board for six years, a member of the Granby Democratic Town Committee, and a fourth grade teacher at the now-closed Ursuline Academy in Springfield, Mass. In 1981, she retired to Mystic, Ct., where she continued to work as a substitute teacher in the Groton school system and as a docent at the Mystic Seaport Museum.
A seasonal resident of Groton Long Point, Ct., since the late fifties, people always said they knew summer had arrived when they saw her swimming in the water long before everyone else. As a Democrat, she was thrilled with the results of last week's election, in particular when she learned that Peter Welch, the son of lifelong friends, was elected to Congress in Vermont.
Her favorite writers ranged from Edward Bellamy, author of Looking Backward, who lived next door to her in her childhood home in Chicopee, to Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Maeve Binchy, Alice McDermott, and biographies, including a recent one about Robert Louis Stevenson. She loved many places, including St. Edmund's Enders Island in Connecticut, the Mystic-Noank (Ct.) Public Library, the Summit House on Mount Holyoke in Hadley, Mass., and Reginald's Tower in Waterford, Ireland. In a world that insists on dumbing things down, she insisted on smarting things up. A stickler for using the correct word, the correct table manners, and the correct grammar, she deplored lapsed standards such as the custom of addressing older people by their first names without permission or the lack of formal attire at formal occasions. She cringed whenever anyone said she was a "saint" for bringing up six children on her own, but as the subject of a memoir called Uphill Walkers by her daughter Madeleine, she used to joke that she might be one for allowing herself to be the object of written scrutiny: "Being fierce, from New England, she took the words of Robert Frost personally when he wrote, 'Provide, provide.' On the other hand, being Irish Catholic by heritage, she took Frost's meaning in the most unlikely light, not so much concerning herself with the homely task of supplying the basics in a cold climate, firewood and flannel, as dedicating herself to giving us what she thought our lives would have been like had our father lived: a swirl of lessons and opportunities and symbolic offerings, such as red meat and equestrian training at Mt. Holyoke College."
A Funeral Mass will be celebrated in her memory at St. Mary Mother of the Redeemer Church, Groton Long Point Road, Groton on Wednesday, Nov. 15th at 11 a.m. Interment in St. Patrick's Cemetery, Chicopee, MA is private for the family.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Mrs. Blais's name to the Sisters of Providence at Providence Place, 5 Gamelin St., Holyoke, Mass. 01040.
To send her family a message of remembrance/condolence, please click the link below.