Jeralyn H. Mason

Jeralyn Bradley Hughes (Jerry) Mason died peacefully at Kaplan Family Hospice House in Danvers, Mass., early in the morning of Saturday, November 20, 2010, at the age of eighty-eight. She was born in Brockton, Mass., January 1, 1922, the daughter of John and Frances Hughes. After high school in Brockton she attended Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School for two years and then worked briefly as a typist in Boston. In 1943 she took the train to Arkansas to marry Willard Allen (Bill) Mason, Jr., her high school sweetheart, who had joined the Army Air Corps and was stationed there. They were married for fifty-nine years, until Bill died in 2002.

As an Air Force wife for twenty-one years, Jerry was always ready for the next adventure and gamely moved her family all over the United States. In 1964, Bill retired from the Air Force, and the family settled in Marblehead. Jerry pursued employment outside the home for the first time in her married life and soon became an executive secretary, for the International Advisory Service in Lynnfield for many years and later for the president of Vappi Construction in Cambridge. Jerry loved Marblehead and enjoyed getting to know the people at the local businesses in her Washington Street neighborhood. In the 1970s she became one of the first female deacons of the Old North Church in Marblehead.

Jerry was a seeker and a lifelong learner whose curiosity about the world ceased only with her death. Around 1970 she began taking classes through the Harvard Extension School, and she continued taking classes through Salem State College’s Explorers Lifelong Learning Institute up until the last year of her life. She attended Middlebury College’s annual four-day Alumni College at Bread Loaf in Vermont every year except one from its inception in 1975 until 2008. She traveled widely, to all of Western Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, and China, visiting many countries multiple times.

Jerry Mason was a person of integrity, which was important to her, and she loved to try new things. She took ballet classes in her fifties and went white-water rafting in her seventies. She had a wonderful sense of style and expressed her creativity in cooking, sewing, and designing and decorating her home. She read extensively and loved good films and the theater. She was a member of the Peabody Essex Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and volunteered for and contributed to many organizations over the years. Finally, she was funny! She will be remembered especially for her great sense of humor and sharp wit.

She is survived by her daughters, Jill Mason; Linda Mason Smith and her husband, David Devine; Kathy Lindsey and her partner, Conrad Ambrette; and Julie Lacey and her husband, Neil; her grandchildren, Andrew Lindsey and his wife, Gabriella; Amy Lieb and her husband, John; Bridget O’Callaghan and her husband, Pauric; and Gordon Lacey; her great-grandchildren, Sara, Haven, and Katie; and her nieces, Carol Cox, Jane Larson, and Susan Wilson, and nephews, Rick and Bob Cox, and their children.

The family will be forever grateful to Visiting Angels Home Care Providers, especially Pat Madore, Cathy Forgione, Kathy Perez, Allison Hanrahan, Renee Holmes, Lori Walsh, and Sally Blais and Amy Christensen.

Memorial contributions may be made to Hospice of the North Shore, 75 Sylvan Street, Suite B-102, Danvers, MA 01923. No memorial service has been scheduled at this time.

Arrangements by the Eustis and Cornell Funeral Home, Marblehead.