Strafford
Born into a family of privilege, Coffin attended Yale College and graduated early to serve in the Navy in World War II. After receiving a masters in business administration from Harvard in 1948, Coffin embarked on a long and illustrious business career that took him all over the world.
His service to the nation and business accomplishments alone would make Coffin memorable, but it is the life he led after he moved to Strafford with his family in 1974 that define the man.
Once in the Vermont town, Coffin embarked on a second career of sorts: as an entrepreneur, social and political activist, cherished community member and friend.
On a cool, overcast afternoon in May, more than 300 people made their way to the Town House in Strafford to celebrate the life of Coffin, who died on April 18 at 94. Friends and family members squeezed into rows of pews, and those who couldn’t find seats stood along the sides and back of the hall for the entire two-hour service. The mourners came from all walks of life; young children to octogenarians, men in business suits and farmers in overalls. Families of three generations sat together to celebrate the life of a man known as Papa Neddy or Ned or simply “my friend.”
In recalling his friend, Don Hooper said, “He made us feel joyous, purposeful, relevant, curious, principled, never self-absorbed, at least in my experience. He brought out the best in me; he revved me up, made me feel alive.
“In so many ways, Ned was my good angel, he was inspirational, he was caring, giving, smart, a walk-the-talk Democratic activist. He was an influential fatherly mentor without being overbearing. He was of the elite without being an elitist,” said Hooper a Brookfield, Vt., resident and former Vermont secretary of state.
Coffin was born in New York City in 1921, into a world his younger sister Margot Lindsay, 90, described in her riotously funny tribute as “a life of private schools, chauffeurs, governesses, and a summer house in the country: your basic Edith Wharton novel.”
Ned’s father, William Sloane Coffin Sr., was a director of his family’s furniture and rug business, W. & J. Sloane Company, which catered to high-end clients, and had a hand in decorating such prestigious properties as the White House and The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, Fla. The elder Coffin was later president of the board of trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and was instrumental in establishing moderate-income housing in Greenwich Village.
Ned was the eldest of three — his younger brother was the esteemed civil rights leader and minister, the late William Sloane Coffin — and Margot was the baby.
Two events profoundly changed the lives of the Coffin children: the Depression of the 1930s and the sudden death of their father on Ned’s 12th birthday. According to Margot, her father had “hunks of Manhattan on second mortgages and we lost a lot of our money.”
Having lost their fortune, Coffin’s mother moved the family to a simpler life in Carmel, Calif. She continued to instill a social conscience in her children, and this quality shined through Coffin in much of what he did, particularly once he moved to Strafford. Among his many projects, Ned worked to provide affordable housing in the area. When his wife, Vi, became active in the Vermont Democratic Party, rising to chairwoman of the party, Ned jumped in, and together they were instrumental in building a statewide database of Democratic voters.
“I first met Ned on a bus trip about eight years ago,” recalled Vermont Democratic Chair Dottie Deans, a Pomfret resident. “He is a magnet, his smile is something that draws you to him; because of his humor, his engagement, and we could talk politics. He instantly became your friend. He found out what you were interested in and he remembered it. He was totally authentic with everyone.”
Ned and Vi were familiar faces at candidate meet-and-greet events around the area, and until the end of his life Coffin fought for the causes in which he believed.
In December 2006, the two of them, then in their mid-80s, drove south to Manchester to see then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama test the campaign waters with an early appearance in New Hampshire, almost two years before his historic election.
“We came a long way. It was worth it,” Ned Coffin told a Valley News reporter covering the event. “I just think he spoke very simply to what most of us really are concerned about. The wish of all of us is for a new direction.”
He was a regular letter writer to the Valley News and last year wrote: “It’s past time to recognize that we can no longer dominate the world as other great powers, the Germans, the British and then the French, learned long ago … It’s time that we citizens think about the lessons other great powers have learned, and we should have, and tell our representatives by phone, mail and our votes, if necessary, to stop sending our boys to be killed in wars we know, and they in their hearts probably know, we cannot win.”
Along with social activism, Coffin’s other great passion was his community, and the multitude of friendships he nurtured and cherished.
“Ned’s was the family we chose,” said Elizabeth Dycus, whose family met the Coffins in 1976 at a parade for Ned’s son Tad, who had just won two equestrian gold medals at the Olympics. “He was actively engaged in everything he did and he never stopped learning. He was a gentleman and a scholar, but you can’t stop there. He also raised chickens and he loved his chain saw.”
Coffin’s beloved chain saw, and his children’s disapproval of it, is a bit of a running joke among those closest to him. References to a mischievous Coffin on his property, chain saw in hand, peppered tributes at the service, and in private conversations afterward.
That he had time to cut trees on his property is a mystery, given that Coffin devoted an inexhaustible amount of time to his causes, his family and friends.
“He was remarkable in so many ways,” said Lou Hance, Coffin’s longtime friend and companion after Vi died in 2008 “If anyone was sick in town, he would take something over to them, he would read to them.”
“His relationship with his children and grandchildren was absolutely central to his life,” his sister Margot said. “My grandchildren adored him, Bill’s grandchildren adored him. I feel incredibly lucky to be part of that family.”
Equal to the stories of his love and support are stories of the opinionated man, who could be stern when he believed in a cause, be it political, as when he showed up at Elizabeth Dycus’ house to admonish her for refusing to sign a petition; or personal, as when he vetted the fiance of his sister Margot by sending away for the young man’s undergraduate transcript.
Coffin was a family man above all, and one of his greatest joys later in life was reconnecting with his siblings.
His brother Bill moved to Strafford in the 1980s and Margot says the brothers reveled in each other.
“Bill took all of the oxygen out of the room, and Ned seemed to really roll with it. At the end, I think it meant more to Bill that Ned lived across the street. Ned was enormously generous in his acceptance of Bill moving into town, his town,” she said.
In his later years, Ned and Margot also reconnected, and through regular phone calls shared the details of their lives. She said that in his last years he exuded “contented man.”
“My picture of him will always be of him sitting at the kitchen table in his plaid bathrobe with his coffee, his iPad and his Valley News, (his adored dog) Sadie in his lap, looking forward to the day’s adventures,” she said.
In her public tribute, Judith Coffin received a huge laugh when she recounted that the most important thing her father taught her was to drive a stick shift while eating an ice cream cone. Speaking later she said, “He was very protective and reassuring. You felt like nothing bad was going to happen to you. The private man reveled thoroughly in being the head of this huge, sprawling family.”
At the end of the memorial, members of the VFW Post 3295 in Deerfield, Mass. — including members of the family — to which Coffin belonged, stood outside the hall and gave a military Honor Guard salute. Mourners stood in silence on the cold hill, remembering a man who gave them all so much of himself. As a lone bugler played Taps, one could imagine the man they came to mourn standing across the street at his home with a to-do list in his hand and a smile on his lips.