Allegra S. Lake

Allegra Shenefiel Lake, 93, formerly of Delhi, Walton, Ellisburg, and Napoli, New York, and the mother of 13 children, 121 grand, great-grand, and great-great-grandchildren, died peacefully after several years of care by her family for dementia and congestive heart failure at the home of her daughter in Binghamton on February 12, 2022.

Allegra Helen Shenefiel was born to David and Rosa Hoxie Shenefiel in her Hoxie grandparents' farmhouse on June 25, 1928, on Hoxie Hill Road, Napoli, New York. She was the eldest of seven children and spent her early years on her parent's dairy farm, adjacent to the Hoxie and Shenefiel families' vast and mountainous Cattaraugus County crop and wooded lands, through the end of World War II. She recalled her early life during the Great Depression, living without modern lighting, an indoor bathroom, or an automobile. Electric power lines did not extend to their remote farm; their outhouse was nicknamed "Nellie." Her parents could only afford what they needed most. A tractor for tilling and generating power for milking their cows.

As a child, Mrs. Lake helped her parents raise chickens and vegetables on their farm and narrowly missed attending a one-room schoolhouse because of the advent of New York State school centralization in the 1930s. During the war, her father, having built a small windmill to generate a few watts of electricity for their farmhouse, helped organize the Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Rural Electric Cooperative that first brought commercial electricity to unserved parts of their community in 1945. A few years later, her father installed the first television for miles around with a rudimentary antenna atop their farm's 1,890-foot Hoxie Hill. Mrs. Lake recalled, it drew friends and neighbors to watch TV programs from Buffalo 60 miles away.

Mrs. Lake traced her paternal family history to the Palatine German emigration to Pennsylvania in 1733. And her maternal family history to the English migration into Rhode Island and Massachusetts in the mid-1600s. Despite her mother's family settling in Napoli in the 1830s, her maternal great-grandparents and her grandfather lived for three years as pioneer cattle ranchers among the Comanche native Americans of North Texas in the 1880s.

Her great-grandfather, Francis Asbury Fairbanks of the Union Army's 16th Infantry Regiment, Michigan Volunteers, Company G, was involved in the Civil War battles of Chancellorsville, Manassas, Gettysburg, and the Battle of the Wilderness where a Confederate gunshot to the knee left him wounded and then discharged for recovery. Previously in the war, he was awarded while courageously rescuing and resurrecting the regimental flag during the Second Manassas (2nd) Battle of Bull Run.

A 1946 graduate of Randolph Central School, Mrs. Lake initially pursued architectural design studies at New York State Agricultural and Technical College at Alfred. Before interstate highways, she traveled to and from college on the Erie Railroad during its final years of steam locomotion. She occasionally hitched a ride with a college classmate whose father had a small airplane, landing the co-eds on a field near the campus. Her June 14, 1947 marriage to her high school classmate, Warren C. Lake of Kennedy, New York, interrupted her studies, and a family soon followed. While Mr. Lake was in the U.S. Navy assigned to the destroyer, USS Perry, the couple briefly lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Then, Dayton, South Dayton, and Woodville, New York, before settling for many years in Ellisburg. She was a member of the Ellisburg Methodist Church, and she volunteered in her children's school, where they played, assisted, and cheered for the Union Academy at Belleville basketball team while setting a New York State record 104-game win streak that still stands today. While raising her 13 children, she was also a member of the Ellisburg Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary. Mr. Lake died on October 27, 1983.

Mrs. Lake enjoyed a long career in health care and had a love for learning. As a pharmacy clerk, she was employed by Fay's Drugs in Watertown and later moved to the Catskills, where she was known as Ann. She performed a similar role at the Walton Pharmacy and Delaware Valley Hospital. Upon becoming an elder care aide, Mrs. Lake re-entered college for nursing at SUNY Delhi, Broome Community College and SUNY Oneonta. She was awarded degrees in Licensed Practical Nursing, Registered Nursing and Sociology in the same years as some of her children completed high school.

She moved to Delhi, settling into her beloved 1886 Victorian house where, she said, similar to the Allegheny Plateau of her youth, she felt at home in the thickly forested mountains of the western Catskills. She became a nurse at O'Connor Hospital and then the nursing supervisor at the Delaware County Home and Infirmary until her retirement at 70.

One of the highlights of her life after retirement was a trip to Alaska, where her determination outweighed the fear of her travel companions, and she took a solo passenger flight in a small chartered ski plane into the Alaskan wilderness. She also capped off her retirement with a trip to England to see the white cliffs of Dover, a vivid memory of her teenage youth while listening to European war news on her family's battery-operated farm radio.

An engaging conversationalist about Catskill Mountain historical farm architecture and its flora and fauna, during her many forays into the rural countryside, Mrs. Lake was often quizzed about her New York State license plate, which displayed the moniker, "Ma-of-13." She replied with either dry humor or no explanation, what-so-ever. She occasionally helped at her daughter's Delhi Diner restaurant, where patrons frequently requested her homemade cookies. After her first retirement, she continued working as a part-time hospice nurse and caretaker for Catskill Area Hospice until the onset of dementia forced her final retirement at 80. She often said that her proud professional and personal accomplishment was providing expert and tender care for people in their final stages of life, including her eldest daughter, Julie Lake Bettinger, who died of cancer at age 50.

Mrs. Lake enjoyed quilting, sewing, knitting, jigsaw puzzling, photography, bowling, geology, and gardening with flowers, vegetables, and weeds! Also, wild bird and squirrel feeding, food pantry volunteering, canning fruits and vegetables, and baking rich, buttery cinnamon buns and oatmeal/chocolate chip cookies. She also was appreciated for baking bread for her family and the Ellisburg Store during the Lake Effect snowstorms of the 1960s and '70s. She loved reading books and magazines. She favored her sizable collection of fiction and nonfiction books on many subjects, including romance and western novels and biographies of renowned historical figures. She often could be found asleep in the early morning hours with an open book collapsed on her chest.

Possessing sardonic wit, Mrs. Lake occasionally displayed scornful disdain to anyone who interrupted her favorite hour of television: Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. She roamed the Catskills, photographing the region's flora and rapidly disappearing bank barns featuring decorative cupolas, and she amassed a collection of more than 10-thousand photographs of 19th Century barn architecture. She was an avid quilter and fabric hoarder, having completed dozens of quilts passed onto her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and, to their chagrin, boxes and boxes of scrap fabrics. And she could knit a pair of mittens and a warm winter hat in a day, often donating them to newborn and needy children.

Her children's father, her parents and three siblings; Bruce and David Shenefiel, and Margaret Shenefiel Bailey predecease Mrs. Lake. She was also predeceased by her infant twin children, Jodie and Wayne Lake, her daughter, Julie (James) Bettinger, her granddaughter, Jayne McGowan, and her great-granddaughter, Arden Davis.

Survivors include her siblings, Barbara (Gilbert, deceased) Myers, Williston, VT; Randall (Frances) Shenefiel, Falconer; and Lola (William) Armstrong, Chebeague Island, ME. Survivors also include her children, Signe Jayne (James) McGowan, Henderson Harbor; Gregory (Diane) Lake, Ellisburg; Daniel (Jeanne) Lake, Fuquay-Varina, NC; Joy Lake Archer, Leesburg, FL; Jill (Donald) Lang, Homer; Jarol Lake, Binghamton; Karen (Larry) Hounshell, Mabank, TX; Kevin (Jeanne) Lake, Ellisburg; Timothy Lake, Henderson Harbor; Jordan (Robert) Walsh, Lewes, DE; Jonathan (Melissa) Lake, Port Crane; and Cory Lake, Binghamton. Mrs. Lake is also survived by 37 grandchildren, 76 great-grandchildren, eight great-great-grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews.

Since the onset of her dementia, Mrs. Lake's children remained determined to alternate duties and care for their mother at home instead of relying on the professional services of a nursing home. For the past two years, no fewer than 32 family members performed overnight on-watch duty shifts via Internet cameras so those at home with Mrs. Lake could get some sleep.

Spring Interment in the Shenefiel Family Plot will be in the East Randolph Cemetery. A celebration of her life will be held during the family's 2022 "Lake Effect" summer reunion.

The Lake and Shenefiel families appreciate the services of Marita, Liz, Amy, Mae, and Tristyn of Lourdes Family Practice, Palliative and Hospice Care. They also thank Laura and the team at the Yesteryears adult day program of the Broome County Office for Aging and Diane and Sherry who were available to help supervise Mrs. Lake during her advancing years.

In place of flowers, please consider a donation in Mrs. Lake's name to Yesteryears, Helios Care (formerly Catskill Area Hospice and Palliative Care), or Medi-Teddy.org, an internationally renowned non-profit 501(c) 3 public charity founded by Mrs. Lake's great-granddaughter, Ella Casano, and providing comfort teddy bears to pediatric and adult I.V. and enteral feeding patients.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.bennettfh.com for the Lake family.