HANOVER, NH — Our sweet and gentle mother Anne P. Luquer Boswell passed away peacefully at her son’s home in Dorset, VT on January 19, 2020, three days before her 82nd birthday. She lived in Hanover for 51 years, 39 of those years in the Upper Valley with her late husband, Judge John I. Boswell. For the last six years, she lived at Kendal.
Born in 1939 to Evelyn and Frances Luquer, Anne grew up in Manhattan, attended The Spence School and Abbot (now Phillips) Academy in Andover, but was destined for a country life. As a young girl, she spent summers in Ridgefield, Connecticut and Bar Harbor, Maine. Judging from the number of blue ribbons she collected, much of that time was spent riding splendidly on horseback. As a teenager, she climbed Grand Teton, and stayed with alpine Olympic racer Betty Woolsey in Wyoming. In winters, she navigated New England slopes with perfect balance. Just six years ago on a skiing trip to Japan with her grandchildren, she was the only one among us who didn’t crash.
As a young woman, pictures show an enchanting Anne as a debutante in New York City but her heart was to belong with childhood friend John who was growing up between Old Lyme, CT and Woodstock, NY. This union stemmed from an encounter that involved a horse which belonged to her parents and which, it was said, could use some looking after by someone with a strong back. Over the years, the friendship blossomed into a romance while Anne was completing college at Vassar. One day, as the story goes, Anne baked an apple pie and set off with it by bicycle (some considerable distance) to find John and make the point that being together would be awfully nice. They married in 1961, spent a year in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the next eight years in New York City. Deciding to raise their family in the country, they arrived in Hanover in 1970 with three young children (Thomas, Frances and Charlie) and a springer spaniel. John’s first job as a lawyer at the Dartmouth National Bank provided an economic “toe-hold” while the family settled in. After that first year on Prospect Street, they moved to Downing Road. There, Anne loved the golden light at sunset which reflected off the river through the pine trees, and directly in her kitchen window. She enjoyed growing fresh vegetables in her garden at home and at one of the community plots opposite the Ray School. Later at her Choate Road home, her hollyhocks filled the front and backyards with colour. She loved paddling on the Connecticut river and watching her children frolic at Storrs Pond, Area 5.
If angels walk the Earth, Anne must have been among them. In the mid 70s, her household increased by two with the arrival of her husband’s elderly parents, Pat and Charles. Anne wove them into her family fabric beautifully and tended to their needs till the end. When her own mother was widowed about ten years later, she brought yet another parent into her own growing family fold. She simultaneously balanced the needs of three to four generations for over four decades. By bicycle and for fitness, Anne plied the roads of Hanover bringing groceries home. By way of an old but reliable car, she delivered Meals-on-Wheels to families on back roads of the Upper Valley. Whenever someone had poison ivy or a fever, her cool hands soothed the discomfort. Whenever dogs got skunked, she came to the rescue with tomato juice. Her corn bread and blueberry muffins made everyone leap out of bed in the morning and rush to the kitchen. Her attitude somehow made her children enthusiastically want to do whatever needed to be done. She always had multiple books on the go, songs under rehearsal, and had a sharp eye for good grammar. When people were not looking, she sketched, water-coloured or sewed what she had observed. She loved skating on Occom Pond and cross-country skiing on the Hanover golf course and at the Shumway’s Moose Mountain Lodge in Etna. Anne knew the talk of the town, who was well, who was not, and how things were “veering.” At Kendal, she loved introducing her children to her friends which re-united Hanover childhood school-mates through their Kendal parents.
Anne’s boundless passion for more than three decades – but carved out of spare time – was ancient celestial navigation methods of Greek and Mediterranean seafarers. She devoted unbelievable effort at understanding the meaning of symbols on a clay tablet known as the Phaistos Disc which had been unearthed in Crete. She taught herself ancient Greek and seemingly understood every nuance of Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey. She travelled to Crete and the Republic of Georgia to personally cross-check her observations and theories. A research paper that she wrote on this subject was housed in a museum in Crete. If stars were bright at night wherever Anne might be, she would check the positions of the constellations. A few days before her passing, her son Tom called from Hong Kong, reported seeing the outline of a woman in the sky at dawn, reckoned it was Anne, and thought it must have something to do with the Greek gods that fascinated her.
Following the loss of her husband in 2009, Anne travelled extensively in the company of her children and grandchildren to Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Scotland, France, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Myanmar, and Japan.
Anne is survived by her son Thomas and his wife Margaret Van, Frances and her husband Caspar Luard, Charlie and his partner Tracy Rodriguez, and five grandchildren; Marco and Miranda Van-Boswell, Sophie and Plum Luard, and Russell Boswell.
Due to COVID, no service is scheduled but a booklet commemorating her life is being planned.