Meredith Waddell

She was far more than the sum of her roles: the embodiment of maternal devotion, a true friend, an engaging conversationalist, and a woman of wonderful taste. Her daughter’s friend once described her as “a fashion oasis”, but he’d only just met her and didn’t know that actually she was simply “an oasis”: respite from a sometimes harsh world. Those who did know her were lucky. She was exceptionally kind, generous, and gentle, with a forgiving heart and goofy sense of humor. She made up nonsense words and short silly songs to sing to herself. She held high ethical and aesthetic standards but never criticized or moralized when those close to her missed the mark.

Born in Austin, Texas in 1945, Meredith spent her earliest years in Wichita, Kansas and grew up in Abilene, Texas before attending Barnard College in New York. As a child she won first place in a statewide sewing competition, medals for riflery and archery, and learned to fly a single-engine airplane as a teenager. She studied piano, collected baseball cards of her favorite players, and ignored her mother’s advice to let boys think they were smarter than she was.

During graduate studies at Princeton, she spent two years in Japan. She was fluent in Japanese and French—skills she continually practiced by speaking them to her cats. She met her husband, David, when they were both PhD candidates and spent most of her adult life with him on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

In the 1970s and early ’80s, Meredith worked as a cultural liaison at the Japanese ad giant, Dentsu. She played an unsung but meaningful role introducing post-war Japan to the United States. She befriended an Undersecretary of Commerce and was interviewed on Tokyo Radio before leaving her career to raise her children.

Later, she studied interior design at Parsons. Her eye for pottery, art glass, textiles, and dolls from around the world might have been renowned had she been as avid a self-promoter as a collector. She used her creativity and zest for abundance to make Christmas mornings feel like scenes of magic—as if Santa had unquestionably visited their apartment the night before.

In college she won photography contests; when her children were young, she photographed them whenever the light or their expressions inspired her and spent hours with rulers and X-Acto knives cropping and assembling meticulous albums. When they were older, if they faced hardships she found a way to be near for as long as they needed.

Meredith relished Russian literature, paperback murder mysteries, and Alan Furst spy novels with equal appetite. She could recount the details of key figures and events across history—from monarchies and revolutions to major movements in art, architecture, music, literature, and science. After moving to Columbia County later in life, she delighted in having a garden of her own—welcoming bees and butterflies and battling snails and deer. The photo collection she left behind on her phone is a sea of blooms.

Meredith is survived by her husband, David; her children, Daniel, Leila, and Tait; her grandchildren, Tecla and Italo; her brothers, Rick and Grady; her sister, Ginger; and many cousins, nieces, nephews, and friends.

Her family has no words for the experience of her absence. They imagine her reunited with her parents, Kent and Kay, and with the cats and dogs she loved throughout her life—perhaps even a divine version of the loving-yet-ferocious pet tiger she always wished she could have—and take a shard of comfort from that image.

A Celebration of Life will be held at the Wave Hill Public Garden & Cultural Center in Riverdale on April 20 from 11am to 2pm, when spring blossoms are at their height.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Southern Poverty Law Center or Doctors Without Borders.