Priscilla L. McEwen

Hospital after living positively many years with cancer. She was born December 29, 1921,

in Cambridge Mass to Edward Atkins and Eleanor Larner. Her parents and three brothers

moved to Amherst NH for Pricilla’s early school years and then to Lexington Mass.,

where Priscilla entered Lexington High School. She graduated from Tufts University

with a degree in English and worked briefly in publishing before her marriage to William

Robert McEwen an 1949.

Priscilla’s three children remember their childhood home often populated with Priscilla’s

friends who enriched the family’s life. Many of these friends were from Priscilla’s

childhood and continued to be the core of an active and outgoing social life throughout

her life. A shy child, Priscilla later reminisced about her first day as a freshman at

Lexington High School. Nervous about being new, she summoned the courage to ask a

returning student to walk into school with her to break the ice. This person became a life

long friend.

Pricilla was never one to back away from a challenge or adventure. In the 1950s she

bravely and gracefully faced the challenge of her husband’s battle with polio. Despite the

hardship of these years, she looked back with fondness on the camaraderie of patients and

doctors at the Haynes Memorial Hospital in Brighton Mass., where her husband was

quarantined for six months.

Pricilla was an avid, lifelong traveler and enjoyed many trips to a abroad. Her last trip

was to Istanbul at the age of 85, which she was able to negotiate despite impaired vision

and treatment for her recently diagnosed cancer. Throughout her life she enjoyed

athletics and literature.

Priscilla was widowed in 1993. During the remaining years of her life she was an

example of courage and vitality. With her exuberant interest in people and travel, she

taught us that it is possible to live life positively under the umbrella of cancer. Priscilla

also demonstrated how it is possible for a woman in her 70s to make the transition from

homemaker to someone who could comfortably manage her own affairs.. She taught us

that macular degeneration, a disease that brought her to blindness, need not keep a person

from ‘seeing’ the joy in living. Priscilla lived life actively until a day before her death.

We McEwens, as well as relatives and friends, will miss Priscilla, but are fortunate to

carry her spirit in our hearts.

Funeral services will be held at First Congregational Church on Thursday at noon.In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Massachusetts Association for the blind www.mabcommunity.org