Frances E. Quint

Frances E. Quint, Feige Esther bat Tzvi Dov ve Rivka of Cambridge, lately of Newton, MA on Sunday, August 10, 2025.

Beloved daughter of the late Harry & Eva Quint, and beloved youngest sister of the late Arthur Quint, George Quint, and Bette Grossman. Loving aunt of Joanne Grossman and John Seesel and great aunt of their children Ben and Holly, and great-great-aunt of their children Sam and Amy; great aunt of Becky Seesel; aunt of Jeff Grossman; aunt of Robert and Susan Grossman and great aunt of their children David, Miriam and Rachel; aunt to Richard and Ruth Grossman and great aunt to their children Dina, Joshua, Yonatan, and Yael; aunt of Al and Ellen Quint and of Susan Hirschaut, great aunt of her children Joshua and Kobi, and great-great aunt of her grandson Liam; and aunt of Douglass, Andrew, and Thomas Quint and great-great aunt to their children and grandchildren. Frances passed away at the age of 99. We thought she’d outlive us all.

Frances was born May 3rd, 1926, as the youngest of four children to Harry and Eva Quint, who owned a haberdashery in Central Square. She said she could tell a man’s collar size from 20 paces and both she and her late sister Bette gleefully claimed to once have sat on a box of straw hats, ruining them all.

Frances attended Radcliffe College while living at home and never moved out of the house she had lived in since birth, until two years ago, when it became clear that her needs were better met at an assisted living facility.

After graduation from college in 1947, she worked as the assistant to the first dean of the faculty at Brandeis University. She liked to say that she personally hired the first group of Brandeis faculty, because she read all of the applicants’ CVs and shuffled the good ones to the top before handing them to the dean.

Quiet, unassuming, agreeable, and very tiny, the first impression of Frances could belie her strength, persistence, and accomplishments. She did make it clear to everybody she met that she went to Radcliffe but also insisted that this was just “what one did back then” because Radcliffe was so close to her home. She was less likely to mention that she was a business owner in the 1950s, running an employment agency until her retirement, a pioneering achievement she shrugged off as nothing special. She was much more interested in learning about the people around her than she was in holding forth about her own accomplishments.

She was a lifelong learner, spending her retirement years taking every class the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement had to offer. It didn’t really matter what the class was about or who taught it, Frances found all of it interesting. She pursued learning in its purest form: simply for the sake of learning and enjoyment. She thrived in social interactions, deriving genuine pleasure from learning more about people, without ever being nosy, intrusive, or judgmental. She guarded her own privacy and respected that of others, but loved talking about people’s professions, travels, families, or world events, responding “oh, that’s nice” to almost everything. And she truly meant it. A pragmatist, with a positive outlook on life, an open mind and generous spirit, she met even negative events with stoicism, a shoulder shrug, and a simple “ok.” She even ultimately agreed to move out of her lifelong home and into assisted living with her trademark equanimity. When asked whether she enjoyed living there, she said: “I’d rather be in Cambridge, but if you have to live in a place like this, this is a good one.“

Even when her memory left her, her fierce intellect and dry sense of humor remained. She could subtract 1926 from the current year to determine her age at great speed, contribute accurate answers to trivia questions even while looking like she wasn’t following the conversation, and provide witty comebacks for most of life’s situations. She loved chocolate and ice cream in any combination and was always good for a second cup of tea. She was also deeply grateful to her nephew Richard, to whom she entrusted her care and the management of all of her affairs. She regularly thanked him for “taking such good care of me” and he truly did.

Frances passed away peacefully and quickly. As she would say when hearing about negative world events: “The republic will stand.” But it will be poorer for her absence.

A funeral service will be held at Levine Chapels, 470 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA on Tuesday, August 12, 2025 at 9:00 AM. Burial will follow at Lindwood Memorial Park, 497 North Street, Randolph, MA.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Harvard Hillel, 52 Mt Auburn St, Cambridge, MA 02138, https://www.hillel.harvard.edu.