Mary Alden (Covey) Williams

Mary Alden Covey Williams (96) died on Sunday November 27, 2022 in Ossipee, New Hampshire. She was born in Big Moose in the Adirondacks of New York the daughter of Earl William Covey, a much-admired woodsman, guide, builder, and innkeeper, and Frances Alden Covey, a proud descendant of John Alden, the cooper on the Mayflower during her epic voyage to the promised land in 1620.

Mary was enormously proud of her roots and lifelong friendships from the Adirondacks. She was very much a product of her father’s wisdom and experience including design and construction of buildings that have a place in any inventory of Great Camps of the Adirondacks. His masterpiece is the stone Big Moose Community Chapel, still a popular ecumenical house of worship and community center with enormous magnetic attraction to friends of the lakes region of New York. Likewise from her mother, Mary understood and appreciated the value of traditional education and the joy to be found in books and studying history. Like her mother before her she went to the Northfield School for Girls (1945). She graduated from William Smith College in Geneva, New York where as president of the student body she met her counterpart at Hobart College, the president of its student body, John (Jack) Alfred Williams. Both graduated in June 1949 and were married in the Big Moose Chapel the following August.

Jack was a teacher and a member of the faculty at Mt. Hermon, Pomfret, Oregon Episcopal, Cranbrook, and Williston-Northampton schools from 1949 to his retirement in 1984. Mary was a mother of three and an active member of those school communities. In 1972 she received a masters of library science from the University of Rhode Island and worked in school, business, and municipal libraries thereafter.

In 1984 Mary and Jack retired to a lovely home beside Mirror Lake in Tuftonboro, New Hampshire, a place they had owned for 30 years. Mary adored Mirror Lake, and it was a rare day in which she would not comment on the conditions of the water, the sparkling sunlight, or the prevailing wind. Every visitor was greeted with her cheerful, “Welcome to Mirror Lake.”

Mary was predeceased by her parents Earl and Frances, Jack, her husband of 58 years who died in 2007, and her son Jonathan Alden Williams who died during an epic canoe trip on the Albany River in Ontario in 1968. She is survived by her daughter, Katherine East Williams Hoffer, and her husband, Terry Hoffer, of Danville, Vermont and by her son, Peter Wakeman Iris-Williams, and his wife, Roree Iris-Williams, of Haddonfield, New Jersey.

Mary is also survived by grandchildren Emily Alden Hoffer and her husband Brendan Levine of Jackson, Wyoming, Helon Terry Hoffer and his wife Megan Aimee Norris Hoffer of Eaton, New Hampshire, Jeremy Feoydor Iris of Haddonfield, New Jersey, and Robbi Ben Iris-Williams of Richmond, Virginia. Mary has four great grandchildren, Mason H. Iris-Williams of Blythewood, South Carolina, Alden Willoughby Hoffer and Lucy Carter Hoffer of Eaton, and Aksel Covey Levine of Jackson.

Mary will be remembered as a kind sole who marched to her own drumbeat and whose lifetime included the Great Depression, World War II, the tragic death of a son, social change from war protest, television, computers, and the divisiveness of American politics. She was frugal, portraying in many ways the axiom “make do, use it up, wear it out.” Among her favored personal possessions was a wooden yardstick, somehow broken and taped back together, and frequently used. Her family often kidded about the pile of butter wrappers she collected and stored on her refrigerator door and saved to grease some future cake pan.

Mary loved a good joke, and when sarcasm swirled around the family dinner table, she often took the lead. Prominently displayed in her kitchen was a sign that said “Housework won’t kill you but I’d rather not take the chance.” Kathy remembers daily household chores assigned to her and her brothers while Mary took a place in the sunshine with a book or with a pack of Black Jack chewing gum and a deck of cards.

Mary loved animals and was guilty of feeding ice cream to her dogs. She famously said after one ran away, “I don’t want to train him to come back because I call l him; I want him to come if he wants to.” She was a staunch defender of loons nesting on Mirror Lake, often calling out aggressively to boaters and kayakers who got too close to the nest.

Mary’s family includes some very capable cooks, but her fussiness about food apart from meat, potatoes, and hot coffee was predictable. She had no truck with yogurt or baked beans, thank you, and curiously avoided drinking water. Her explanation was, “It rusts the pipes.” We will always wonder what the basis for that theory was.

At one point Mary and Kathy inspired a comic argument about who could make a better apple pie. Kathy’s was much admired, but Mary insisted that everything Kathy knew about making pies came from her. A World Series of pie making was declared as was a place and time for the championship. Pies were baked, cut and carefully marked so the judges were not able to tell which pie was whose. It was very close. Peter was to make the tie-breaking vote. Thinking he was voting with political correctness for his mother he voted instead for his sister. To Mary’s dying day she was saluted as the Red Ribbon winner of the great World Pie Baking championship.

Wherever her path takes her from this point onward we know Mary will be enormously proud of her years in Big Moose, her home at Mirror Lake, her extended family, and her pretty good apple pies.

Friends who would like to honor Mary with a donation in her name are asked to consider the Big Moose Community Chapel, Treasurer, PO Box 209, Eagle Bay, NY 13331; the Tuftonboro Library, PO Box 73, Center Tuftonboro, NH 03816; or the Friends of Music, PO Box 2056, Wolfeboro, NH 03894

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