Sally Leavitt Cheney Bell

Lebanon, N.H. — Sally Leavitt Cheney Bell died on Tuesday, March 14, 2017, at Harvest Hill in Lebanon, at the age of 88. She was born July 5, 1928, to Dorothy (Hall) and Laurence Leavitt and grew up in Saxtons River, Vt., where her father was headmaster of Vermont Academy. Sally graduated from Radcliffe College in 1949, shortly after marrying her first husband, Edward Rice “Ted” Cheney (also Harvard ‘49), whom she had met when he was a day student at Vermont Academy.

Sally worked at the Russian Research Center in Cambridge, Mass., for a year before moving to Washington, DC, with Ted, who had joined the Foreign Service. In 1952, Sally left the United States for the first time, flying alone in a propeller plane for several days with an infant and an overly active two-year-old to join Ted in Penang, Malaysia. Together, they traveled the world. After two years in Penang, they moved to the Netherlands, then Nicaragua, India, Peru, and the Philippines. Throughout their travels, Sally immersed herself in the local cultures, eventually adding fluent Dutch and Spanish to her knowledge of Russian and French. She and Ted sent their children to local schools, where they became bilingual. Her children remember her as unflappable, unbothered by PTA meetings in another language, snakes in the garage, tarantulas under the bathroom sink, or even a violent revolution in the streets.

In 1976, Ted was killed in a plane crash in the Philippines, and Sally moved back to the Washington, DC, area. She worked as a freelance Spanish-English translator for the U.S. government and as a grader for accreditation exams for the American Translators Association. In 1989, she married her and Ted’s long-time friend, Ernest “Tutt” Bell, also a graduate of Vermont Academy and Harvard. She moved to Keene, N.H., where Tutt was a lawyer and head of the New Hampshire Bar Association. She and Tutt enjoyed many years of travel to exotic locales before his death in 2009. While in Keene, Sally embarked on what she considered “one of the most fulfilling things I ever did” – translating into English the lyrical poems of Ecuadorian poet Fannie Carrion de Fierro, which resulted in the publication in 2000 of the Spanish/English book, “Donde Nacio la Luz” (“Where Light Was Born”).

Sally had a prodigious memory for poems, books, plays, and history, and she could summon a quote for any occasion – be it a hot-air balloon, a truculent child, an eccentric neighbor, or the current political scene. She took delight in obscure facts. Did you want to know which active volcano is most likely to cause the most catastrophic damage? Who Edward the Black Prince was or which ancient civilization discovered beer? Sally could tell you.

Survivors include her children, Dorothy Cheney and her husband, Robert Seyfarth of Devon, Pa., Margaret Cheney and her husband, Peter Welch of Norwich, Vt., E. Drew Cheney and his wife, Sarah Witte of Yarmouth, Maine, and Thomas Cheney and his wife, Charlene Cheney of Durham, N.C. She is also survived by her grandchildren, Caroline Seyfarth Roberts, Lucia Seyfarth, James McNally, Catherine McNally, Peter McNally, Benjamin Cheney, Hilary Cheney, and Stuart Cheney; and by her stepchildren, Robin Bell, David Bell, and Roseanne Currier.

A memorial service will be held in April at St. Barnabas Church in Norwich. Memorial contributions may be made to Vermont Academy (the “Edward R. Cheney ‘44 Scholarship Fund”), PO Box 500, Saxtons River, VT 05154).

To view an online memorial and or send a message of condolence to the family, please visit www.rand-wilson.com.

Arrangements are under the direction of the Rand-Wilson Funeral Home of Hanover, N.H.