Alice I. Coleman

Born in Malden, MA to Joseph and Katherine (Burke) Ryan, Alice graduated from Malden High School in 1935. She began working at the Insurance Rating Bureau on Broad St. in Boston.  In 1941, Alice married Gerard J. (Jerry) Coleman, also of Malden, having courted for several years. After briefly living in Detroit, MI where Jerry had been working, they returned to the Boston area to work and start a family. During the next eleven years, the Colemans lived in Malden except for a brief period in Georgia during Jerry’s Army service, growing the family to six with the successive arrivals of four boys—Stephen, Robert, David, and Thomas. In 1952, the family moved to Stoneham, MA, to a new house built by Jerry and his father.  

Alice enjoyed the Stoneham years and the work of raising and caring for a family of males.  Meanwhile Jerry worked in advertising in Boston, and pursued night classes for a BA and then an MA in accounting. During these years, Alice enjoyed friendships with neighbors in each town, keeping active in visiting her siblings and their families, as well as Jerry’s siblings and their families.

In 1961, they moved to Wellesley, MA, following Jerry’s work as business manager and comptroller of Dana Hall School.  Over the next 17 years, Alice became a regular correspondent with her children and their spouses. She developed long-deferred interests in reading local newspapers, Time and Newsweek, and library books ranging from fiction to medical memoirs.  She worked part-time in the school bookstore, became great friends with several co-workers, and pursued a new interest in ceramics in adult ed courses. After purchasing a cottage in Eastham in 1968, Alice and Jerry began spending weekends exploring the towns and beaches of the Lower Cape. With retirement in 1978 to a new home in Eastham, they became regular walkers at Coast Guard and other nearby beaches, cherishing the scurrying terns, the coming of seals, the waves and sunlight in all seasons.  

 Mrs. Coleman was a wife, mother and homemaker in the traditional sense, seeing to the various needs of home, husband and children. She took pleasure in the early disciplines of bath time, reading to the kids, managing them in chores and homework, and helping each to a good start in school. She was a devoted cook who kept the family happy with special favorites, tasty dinners, and her brownies and toll house cookies. She never tired of her duties, never complained, but rather viewed life positively and never was heard to utter a disparaging word about anyone. Alice was optimistic, without pretense, and she communicated genuineness, kindness, and a strong interest in knowing others.  Alice supported her husband Jerry in demonstrating love of family to their sons, as well as honesty, lifelong learning, respect for others and taking personal responsibility for one’s actions.

 Alice is survived by: her sons, Stephen and his wife Katherine Ann of Chardon, OH; Robert and his wife Susan Nardie of Omaha, NE; David of  Eastham; and Thomas and his wife Rosemarie of Newton, MA; five of six grandchildren; four great-grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews. She is also survived by her sister-in-laws Virginia (Coleman) Woodside of Haverhill, MA, and Ann (Sorenson) Coleman of Ebensberg, PA, and a brother-in-law, Daniel Devlin of North Andover, MA.