2026 Life Logs, Day 218: Celebration of Life for Sue Welsh Reed
Date: Thursday, August 6, 2026
Weather: Sunny and Hot; High Temp 90, Low 69 degrees F
Location: At Home with the Goldstones in Boothbay, ME
After a lovely breakfast with my friends Detta and Tom Porat on their back deck overlooking Great Bay in New Hampshire, I headed to Boothbay in Maine. I arrived at Marti’s ( Jed’s mother) summer home where all the Goldstones were staying at about 10:15 am. At 11 am, we all drove to the southern tip of Southport Island to the Newagon Seaside Inn for Sue Welsh Reed’s Celebration of Life.
Sue was Jed’s aunt, Marti’s sister. Mark and I knew Sue and her husband, John Reed, and spent many nights in their home in Cambridge when Mark was undergoing chemotherapy at Mass General in Boston. I knew some of her life history, but I learned so much more today. Sue was born in 1936, attended Smith College and then went on to get a graduate degree in Fine Arts at Harvard. She worked at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, becoming the Curator of Prints and Drawings. When she retired in 2005, she was named Curator Ermita of Prints and Drawings and was most proud was the award of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, awarded by the French Ministry of Culture in 2006. As part of her work, she traveled to France and Italy and was a treasured mentor to others in the world of prints and drawings. Today, many of those people were there to celebrate her life. Some spoke, but others just quietly shared their wonderful memories of Sue. After the formal tribute to her life, we had a lovely buffet lunch and many of us spent some time walking the outside paths at the lovely seaside resort.
Then this evening, family members gathered at The Rock on Southport. I have heard about The Rock for years but had never been there. I knew it was a summer cottage where Sue and John spent their summers. John’s family was from Southport. ‘Auntie’ owned the cottage known as The Rock because it literally sits on a huge rock overlooking the water.
‘Auntie’ was an artist known for her hand drawn maps of the area. What I didn’t know until tonight is that the cottage is filled with family history with written descriptions on all of the wooden trim pieces around the windows and doors in the cottage. I loved it when tonight someone pointed out the written description of the main events from the day of Heather and Jed’s wedding in Boothbay, September 6, 2003.
I left the younger crowd at The Rock and returned to Marti’s just as the last light of the day was fading. But when I drove up the driveway to Marti’s, there was no light anywhere. It was pitch black. Sue’s best friend from childhood, who remained close with Sue for her entire life, is staying at Marti’s and the two of them did not go to The Rock tonight. I just couldn’t figure out why they would be sitting in a dark house. It was too early for them to be in bed. I had to use my phone flashlight to find my way up the stairs to the front door and when I entered, I found them upstairs scrambling to find flashlights and a lantern as there was no electricity. Marti got a notice that 4,000 customers were without power and about that time I heard from Heather that there was also no electricity at The Rock. The group there didn’t care as they were outside sitting around a fire. But the three of us talked for bit and then decided to turn in.
