ENFIELD — Verna Dunn knew everything about Enfield and West Canaan, from the history of its farms to changes in roadside buildings along Route 4. After all, she’d witnessed the last 101 years of the region’s history unfold before her eyes.
But even with a deep knowledge of the community, Dunn wasn’t the type of person who in old age would sit down and chat someone’s ear off. It simply wasn’t her style.
Instead, family and friends recall a woman who listened, whether it was about the troubles of a family at church or a child’s most recent virtual adventure playing video games.
People several generations younger than Dunn would catch her ear and she could be found at community suppers “just generously listening, engaging and caring,” said the Rev. Paul Guest, of the Enfield United Methodist Church.
“It is typical that as we age, we have a greater difficulty relating to those who are generationally removed from us,” Guest said. “Verna didn’t have that. She was quite gifted at connecting with you no matter what the generational boundary was.”
It’s that caring touch that Dunn brought to conversations, commitment to volunteerism and feisty independence that friends and family say they’ll miss after Dunn died May, 18, 2021, shortly after experiencing a fall and period of deteriorating health. She was 101.
“I’ll definitely miss her hugs, and her gentleness,” Guest said.
Born on Dec. 23, 1919, to Franklin and Stella Leach at the family’s farm on Choate Road, she was the youngest of four sisters and grew up attending one-room schoolhouses on Jones Hill and East Hill roads.
“I was always transported in a horse and buggy,” she recalled in a 2019 interview with the Valley News.
In winter, she said, transportation switched to a horse and sleigh — a “big sled,” as she described it.
Growing up during the Great Depression, Dunn said, her family didn’t have much money but the dairy farm was self-sufficient and provided enough food.
The farm, Sunset View Farm, sold to HP Hood, which operated a milk processing plant on Union Street near the Boston & Maine Railroad lines and on a parcel of land that now houses the Union Street fire station.
Dunn said she remembered taking the train into Lebanon where she and her sisters would pick blueberries and see movies at the Lebanon Opera House.
She also started a lifelong hobby of writing to pen pals, connecting with people all over the world, including a woman in Denmark she corresponded with for 70 years.
Dunn said she was “sickly” as a child, and her doctor advised her not to go onto high school.
That didn’t stop her from living life to the fullest, though. Dunn continued working at the farm, spent 15 years at the HL Webster General Store and provided child care and housework for local families.
Dunn also had two children, Judy and Gary, who she raised on her own in West Canaan near the current site of Mascoma Valley Regional High School.
“She had a hard time bringing us up as a single mother with no support,” Gary Dunn said, adding his mother also was resilient and sacrificed to provide for the family.
Ultimately, Dunn got a job as coordinator at the Opportunity Center in Canaan, a precursor to the Listen Community Service thrift store, retiring in 1982.
Her niece, Jan Kulig said that’s when Dunn started to get more involved in volunteering. She became a 4-H leader, teaching sewing to the Lilac Lassies; worked as a volunteer at the Mascoma Area Senior Center; and spent every Saturday as the cashier at the Enfield Methodist Church Thrift Shop.
“This was a woman who never drove but was never home,” said Karen DeWolf Richard, a longtime congregant and church volunteer.
DeWolf Richard said she first met Dunn after the West Canaan Methodist chapel merged with the Enfield church in the mid-1980s due to dwindling membership.
Dunn, she said, was always at community dinners, working in the kitchen, cutting pies and serving desserts. Dunn also manned the cash register at the church’s thrift shop from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Saturday.
“That gave her a chance to chat and sit and meet people. She became a fixture,” DeWolf Richard said. “She may not have had a whole lot of money but she had a whole lot of love and shared that love with just about everyone.”
At the senior center, Dunn was instrumental in developing gardens around the building and helping to set up for community dinners, said Liz Houghton, the center’s director.
Houghton said Dunn had a special way of bundling up silverware to make it seem like there was a little gift waiting for everyone who came to the meals.
“She was just such a kindhearted person,” she said.
In whatever spare time she had, Dunn was an avid gardener, sewer and baker, Kulig said, who added that quilts were a common gift to family and friends.
“She could also make pie crusts like no one else in the family has ever been able to recreate,” Kulig said.
Dunn also celebrated and was the matriarch to a large family that included five grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, and 10 nieces and nephews.
“She loved her family and family gatherings,” Gerald Dunn said, adding that Thanksgiving was always a favorite event until the family ultimately became too large to meet in one place.
Dunn also was described by many as “sharp as a tack” and fiercely independent. During the last years of her life, she lived on the second floor of Prospect Pines, walking up and down the stairs several times a day because she felt the exercise was good for her.
It helped that Dunn had a wide circle of family and friends who helped drive her to events.
DeWolf Richard said she would sometimes drive Dunn to church in her Mazda Miata, a small, two-door convertible.
“I’d pick her up with that and she would put on airs in front of other ladies at Prospect Pines and talk about how going to church in style in a sports car with the top down,” DeWolf Richard said.
Dunn also lent her knowledge to the Enfield Historical Society, including during an event at the Lockehaven schoolhouse, where she took classes as a child.
The talk, held close to her 100th birthday, was one of the society’s best-attended summer events, organizers said.
“Verna sat in the old oak teacher’s chair behind the matching desk and reminisced about life in one-room schools,” said a tribute to her in the town’s newsletter. “In her reserved way, she kept the audience spell-bound for more than two hours with first-hand recollections from the school past.”
Enfield Town Historian Marjorie Carr said she came to rely on Dunn in recent years for information, calling her a “go-to person” for accounts of the community’s past.
“She was a neat lady, she really was, and it truly was an honor to know her,” Carr said.
Near the end of her life, Dunn took pride in receiving two honors. In 2015, she received an honorary diploma from Mascoma Valley Regional High School in honor of her pursuit of lifelong learning.
She also was awarded the Boston Post Cane in 2019 at age 99, signifying her as Enfield’s oldest resident.
After the ceremony, Dunn reflected on her busy schedule and volunteerism.
“I do a lot,” she said, adding that’s part of living a long life. “Be active.”
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.