QUECHEE — When Frances Fowler visited the Quechee post office, she’d bring cheese.
“I one time mentioned that I really like Babybels and nearly every time she came in, she’d bring some for me,” said postmaster Esther Mesler. “She was just a very pleasant person, I really enjoyed just chatting with her. Whenever she came in, she would always just put a smile on everyone’s face.”
That action was representative of Fowler’s sweet and caring nature for people — family, friends, acquaintances, even strangers — who were lucky enough to meet her before she died on April 25 at her daughter’s home in Florida, a few months after celebrating her 100th birthday on Jan. 7.
Fowler lived part-time in the Upper Valley since 1967 before making it her permanent home in 2008. Her husband, Bob, predeceased her in 1997.
“She had so many different threads of her life,” her son, Hanover resident Steve Fowler, said. “It was extraordinary how many threads she kept going.”
She was known for writing long letters on yellow-lined paper using black-felt pens which she regularly sent to friends, family and acquaintances with details of her daily life.
“Really, anyone she met would become a lifelong friend,” said Fowler’s granddaughter, Courtney Dragiff. “If you went to her for relationship advice, she would say ‘I had offers from a lawyer and a doctor and this guy with blue eyes I thought I’d be following around the bars my whole life while he played piano — when I looked into Bob’s eyes I knew I was home.’ ”
Dragiff moved in with her grandmother at her home on Fowler Lane, near Deweys Pond in Quechee, after graduating from college in 2011. They lived together until Fowler moved to The Woodlands in Lebanon five years later.
“She and I wrote to each other when I was in college,” Dragiff said. “That was part of the reason I thought I should move up here with her, because we developed such a great connection.”
Her correspondence stretched to those she didn’t know, as well.
“If she had a problem with her automobile, she’d write a letter to the president of Ford Motor. And often heard back from them,” Steve Fowler recalled with a smile in his voice.
Once, she wrote the president of Tiffany’s in New York City.
“She made suggestions about how they ought to do their displays,” Steve Fowler, a retired attorney, said. “It seemed natural for her to get in touch with the president and share her thoughts with him.”
She heard back, and would carry around clippings that showed that he took her advice.
“She sort of took everybody on the same terms and expected not to be treated special, but to be treated kindly by everybody she met,” Steve Fowler said. “And people seemed to almost universally respond to that.”
Fowler grew up in Watertown, N.Y. She lived at home while Bob was serving in the Army during World War II and saw combat during the Battle of the Bulge.
“My mother talked about the fact that she was afraid all day and she could only relax at 10 o’clock when they stopped delivering telegrams,” Steve Fowler recalled. “She wouldn’t have heard any bad news about my dad. Then the next day she’d start worrying again.”
The family eventually settled in Long Island, where they raised their four children. Bob Fowler, who was a retail executive, was known as a piano player and the couple were known as great entertainers for the gatherings they held.
“She enjoyed that role,” Steve Fowler said. “She just loved people, being drawn to it and having a good time. She made it all a wonderful occasion every time.”
Judy Reeve, of Hanover, grew up alongside the Fowlers in Long Island and the families later had homes near each other in Quechee. Fowler was lifelong friends with Reeve’s mother, Claire Reeve.
“She and my mother were like twins. The eight kids, between the two families, we would see the two of them walking down the street and from behind we couldn’t tell easily who was who,” Reeve said. “They had this knack, without even knowing it, of dressing similarly.”
Reeve became close with Fowler while planning a surprise 25th anniversary party for her parents in 1965. At that party, she was surprised to learn of Fowler’s political views.
“Everybody was pretty conservative politically and Vietnam was beginning to heat up and I discovered she was against the war and I was astonished, just absolutely astonished,” Reeve said.
She was active in Mothers for Peace, the only time she was politically active beyond voting, her family said.
In later years, Claire Reeve was living in a senior living facility in Connecticut and the two women were as close as ever.
“Right until the time my mom died, she wrote every single day and then she started writing to me frequently,” Reeve said.
In addition to being a regular fixture at the Quechee post office, Fowler was a congregant at the Quechee Church and the Quechee Garden Club.
“She just loved flowers. She’d tell everyone, ‘buy yourself flowers, don’t wait for someone to give them to you,’ ” Dragiff said. “She always had geraniums growing. I have some pink geraniums that are older than me that were in her house in Quechee.”
Fowler was also known for her impeccable sense of style.
“She dressed to the nines always,” said Peggy Cooper, marketing and sales manager at Alice Peck Day Lifecare, who knew Fowler during her time at the Woodlands. Fowler’s hair and makeup were always pristine.
And then there were the heels.
“Even casually she still wore heels. The residents were always in awe that she could still wear heels,” Cooper said. “When she was casual, she was always in jeans that were pressed and in heels.”
Perhaps what Fowler was most known for her was her quiet, unassuming nature and her ability to listen without judgment.
“She had a way of giving advice without it sounding like advice, without telling someone how to feel or how to think,” said Fowler’s daughter-in-law, Linda Fowler.
Linda Fowler, a retired Dartmouth College professor, recalled at one time confiding in her mother-in-law about a particularly bad day she was having and the need to just get away from it all.
“She said, ‘Well you know, I would have days like that and I’d get in the car … and I’d get out the driveway to drive away and then I’d remember I had a roast in the oven,’ ” Linda Fowler said. “That was just her way.”
Her optimism and enthusiasm for life will continue to influence her family and friends for years to come.
“She just was the happiest person I ever met,” Dragiff said. “She’s just timeless.”
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
