Etna, N.H. —
Born on March 27, 1927, in Des Moines, Iowa to Emily Prouty and Donald McMurray, Amie spent her youth mostly in New York City and later New Canaan, Conn. with her mother and step father, Malcolm A. Sedgwick. Amie enrolled at Barnard College after graduation from Abbot Academy, now Phillips Academy, in Andover, Mass. An enthusiastic conservative, she majored in government and history and found the lively political debate at Barnard invigorating. In 1948, she was a young campaign volunteer for GOP presidential candidate Gov. Thomas Dewey and was one of a dozen people in the suite at the Roosevelt Hotel with the Governor when he learned of President Truman’s upset victory – a memorable moment in presidential election history captured by an erroneous “Dewey Defeats Truman” newspaper headline.
Upon graduation from Barnard in 1948, one of her first jobs was with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was tasked by then director, Francis Henry Taylor, as they stood together in the cavernous and very empty entrance hall, with getting people in the door, thus creating the membership department. It was there that she met her future husband Edgar T. Mead, a Wall Street Broker and avid rail enthusiast.
A life-time Republican, Amie worked on John Lindsey’s successful run for mayor in New York and on was appointed to the Board of Visitors of the Manhattan State Hospital by then Governor Nelson Rockefeller. She and her husband were also instrumental in transforming a small church nursery school into a thriving day school at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, now the prestigious Trevor Day School. Amie’s lifelong commitment to volunteerism, begun in New York also included a stint on the board of the YMCA where she and two fellow board members forced the desegregation of the swimming pools. Her work on the hospitality committee at the United Nations brought many diplomats and their families, often in colorful native dress to her home on 5th Avenue, several of whom became life-long friends. As a board member of the Carnegie Hill Association, she helped pave the way for the newly established all black Alvin Ailey Dance Troupe to have a place to rehearse.
In 1967 they left New York for the “boondocks” of Hanover where she continued her civic and political life as a member of the Hanover school board, as the first president of the Friends of the Hopkins Center, as a board member of the Spaulding Youth Center, and active fund raiser for the local United Way. She served on the Board of Dartmouth Overseers as well as helped raise funds for the new Howe Library. She and her husband Edgar ran several unsuccessful campaigns for the N.H. House as Republicans to provide some loyal opposition in the heavily Democrat community.
Amie Mead could not have predicted her passion for politics would take her to the White House almost five decades later, but her spirited interest and involvement in government and public policy paved the way. The culmination of her life-long interest in politics brought the Meads, in 1986, to Washington, D.C. where Amie worked, first on the presidential campaign then in the Executive Office of the President, Office of Domestic Policy as a member of the Senior Staff to President George H. W. Bush for four years.
In 1993, heeding the call for conservatives to return to the foundations of conservatism and states rights, the couple returned to New Hampshire and started The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a non-profit, non-partisan, independent think-tank focused on state and local public policy issues that affect the quality of life for New Hampshire’s citizens. Named to honor Josiah Bartlett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the first Governor of New Hampshire, the center has played an important role in Concord over the last 25 years. Amie remained involved with the Bartlett Center, still thriving in Concord, N.H. under the leadership of Charlie Arlinghaus, which she called a “very fulfilling” coda to her political career.
Amie was a formidable woman with a keen sense of right and wrong. She always led with a smile and an open Iowa heart. Her primary source of fuel was her family and her many friends, who will all sorely miss her wonderful sense of humor and laugh.
Emily “Amie” Mead was predeceased by her husband Edgar T. Mead, Jr. and her eldest son, Thorn Mead. She is survived by her daughter, Mary Mead of Warner, N.H. and her son, Malcolm W. Mead and his wife, Liz Mead of Harding, N.J. Surviving grandchildren include Emerson D. M. and Edgar J. Lennon of Warner, Meredith M. Lester of Chicago, Ill., Morgan T. Mead of Boston, Mass., and Malcolm W. and Drake M. Mead of Harding, N.J.
A memorial service will be held on Oct. 15, 2016, in Hanover at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 9 W. Wheelock Street at 10:30 a.m.
In lieu of flowers contributions may be made to the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy.