Person Page - 9

Long-time local Persis Lovejoy Abbot Ballou died peacefully on June 16 at her home in Lexington at the age of 92 after unexpected heart failure.
Vibrant and active, she loved playing music, swimming, attending performances, taking classes, and appreciating the activities of family and friends through the last days of her life. She was born on October 8, 1921 and was raised in Worcester, MA, daughter of Edmund Quincy Abbot and violinist Melinda Wheeler Rockwood Abbot, and sister of the late Richard Rockwood Abbot and the late David Vaughan Abbot. Music and literature played a major role in her childhood; she was inspired by a family culture of reading aloud and playing music at home, and throughout her life shared her love of books and music with others. Between college and high school she spent a year studying music in New York at a school run by pianist Helen Norfleet, deepening her skills before going on to Oberlin College in Ohio. In addition to music, she also played tennis competitively around that time.
In 1938 she met Sidney Reed Ballou of Concord, MA, on Star Island, near Portsmouth, NH; they married during World War II in 1943. Persis Joy Ballou continued studying at Oberlin College while Sidney served as an Air Corps lieutenant in Florida. After she graduated in 1944 with a major in English and a minor in Music, she joined Sid at Eglin Field Air Force Base (FL). There she began teaching piano and set up opportunities for 27 students to practice by making four pianos available at different locations around the town. She gave birth to the couples first son in 1945.
In 1945 they moved to Lexington and raised Dave, Ted, Steve, and Melinda-Carol; all four learned to play instruments and continued a tradition of playing chamber music and of reading aloud. During the familys early years in Lexington, Persis took summer courses at Tufts University in early childhood education, taught at First Parish nursery school and later at her home, where she created her own pre-kindergarten play group for around 15 children that she ran for several years with an assistant. Persis also taught piano for 37 years, primarily in Lexington, transmitting her love of music to many students. In 1980, the couple moved to Concord, MA to Sidneys boyhood home. There Persis became a docent at the Old Manse, giving tours and historical commentary. This work benefitted from her interest in biography and history.
Sidney died in 1983 after an 18 month battle with cancer and Persis moved back to Lexington in 1985. Persis chief love was music-making. She was an enthusiastic and active amateur musician, playing piano 4 hand duets and accompaniments and violin and viola in string quartets and local orchestras. She played with the Boston Philharmonic for 18 years and later with the Concord Symphony. Over the last decade, she played regularly with the Wellesley Symphony Orchestra, most recently in performances with the WSO this spring. Other music groups for her included the Lexington and Concord Music Clubs. She also attended classes for retirees at Harvard University and at Brandeis Universitys BOLLI program, including recent BOLLI classes on 20th Century Poetry and on Freud which she completed in May.
Persis was an avid swimmer, an important activity after a 1987 bicycle accident necessitated amputation of her right leg. She particularly enjoyed ocean swimming off the North Shore, including on her 90th birthday in October, 2011 and continuing through her last summer. She frequently swam at Boston Sports Club in Lexington, doing her thousand strokes in the water (including the week before she died). Persis was resilient and undeterred by failing eyesight, hearing losses, and back pain as she aged. She said that she found physical ailments boring and that we should focus instead on the world of ideas and music such as a lovely phrase from a symphony or a string quartet, or on the beauty of the trees around her home. She was a loyal and committed friend with a wide network of family and other connections, continuing to write letters even as it became more difficult for her to see. (And she also continued to strike up new acquaintances readily.) She valued local spiritual communities at the Unitarian Universalist churches in Lexington and Bedford and at Friends Meeting in Cambridge, and would often meditate on her screen porch in Lexington. A memorial service was held on June 21st at Follen Church in Lexington to celebrate Persis life with music and remembrances (and was videotaped for those unable to attend).
She is survived by her four children, David & his wife Cindy of Fairfield, IA, Ted & his wife Carol of Naperville IL, Stephen & his wife Annie of Ossining, NY, Melinda-Carol and her husband Patrick Oates of Bedford, MA, and grandchildren, Eric and his wife Dia, Laura, Joseph and his wife Nimmi Chilamkurti, Michael, Marianna, Liam Oates, Jane Vincent and her husband Alex, Lauren Kaynor, Susan and her husband Jim and great-granddaughter Ila Petersmith, and six nephews and six nieces.⁵