A Millerton love story

Mary Howard and Louise R. Black at their home in Millerton.
Natalia Zukerman
Mary Howard and Louise R. Black at their home in Millerton.
As we celebrate Pride Month, the love story of Mary Howard and Louise R. Black stands as a testament to the power of love at any age. The couple found each other later in life through the unlikeliest of places: Match.com.
Louise R. Black was born in Astoria in 1939 and raised in Elmhurst, Queens. “It was a great place to grow up,” she recalled. “A lot of people from foreign countries. We just had so many friends from all over.” Mary Howard was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1942 and spent her formative years in Endicott, NY. Her life has taken her through Washington, D.C., Eugene, OR, and Mount Vernon, NY, where she lived for 31 years and ultimately met Louise.
In 2002, they both joined Match.com, a platform that neither initially embraced with enthusiasm. “I met a lot of females that I just thought were not interesting at all,” said Louise. But upon reading each other’s profiles, something clicked. Mary shared, “I wrote an ad that said I don’t care whether they’re tall or short, fat or skinny. I’m looking for somebody who has some genuine interests of their own that they’re pursuing.” Louise added, “And I said pretty much the same thing.” Their connection was immediate, leading to a memorable first date at an Indian restaurant, an establishment they frequented during the years they lived together in Louise’s apartment in White Plains.
Before meeting Louise, Mary had been married to a man for 30 years. “And happily married,” she added, noting that she had always harbored feelings for women. “I had had feelings for women from a very young age,” Mary explained, “and the marriage was, frankly, over and done with.” Mary and her ex-husband, whom she met as a doctoral student at the University of Oregon, had a daughter together and are still very good friends. Their daughter, who lives in Brooklyn, married a woman and Robert, her ex, conducted the ceremony.
Of her daughter’s sexuality, Mary shared, “My husband and I both just understood that that’s what was happening from a fairly young age for my daughter. She never, you know, made a declaration about it. That’s how it was. It all seemed very natural.” She added, “And the gal that she’s married to now is really very delightful.”
“I love her ex-husband,” Louise added. “We all get along so fabulously well.”
Mary and Louise’s affinity for the Hudson Valley runs deep. Mary, who spent 30 years as a sociology professor at Brooklyn College, conducted extensive research in the area. “The Hudson Valley was kind of the cradle of civilization in many ways,” she noted. Louise’s family owns an island above Saratoga Springs in Fort Edward and the family would spend time up there in the summers when she was little. “It’s 7 1/2 acres and it has a house on it and now my nephew lives across the river.” The couple still go visit from time to time even though the nephew has really “made it his man cave,” laughed Louise. Though she spoke of the house fondly, her memory is scarred by the significant environmental degradation from GE’s pollution. Beginning in 1947 and continuing until 1977, GE intentionally dumped approximately 1.3 million pounds of highly toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Hudson River from Fort Edwards and the neighboring plant in Hudson Falls (now closed). GE also polluted the soil and groundwater under its plants and in the surrounding communities. Louise recalled, “I was about 7 or 8 years old, and I walked out the door of the old house and the river was pink. I screamed for my father, and he explained that it was pink because ‘those are all dead fish belly up.’” GE didn’t close the plant for several years and Louise experienced the “pink” water phenomenon several more times. “It was really sad because we swam in the river, we’d bathe in the river, wash our hair in the river. It was all so wonderful.”
This impactful experience has led Louise to be particularly mindful of the environment as she tends to the gardens at their home in Millerton. The couple have planted numerous trees, native plants, and butterfly bushes and would never dream of using pesticides. About their move from White Plains, Louise shared, “I had always been in apartments, and I decided I wanted to live in a house. So, we came up and we had a lot of fun riding around up here.” The couple knew they wanted to be near the river but weren’t yet set on a town. Every time they came up to look at properties, however, they ended up at Irving Farm in Millerton to regroup.
“We’d have coffee, and we’d cross things off our list,” Mary said.
Louise added, “I finally said to Mary, ‘You know, we keep coming back to this town every time, maybe we should go look at that house again.’” The couple purchased their house in Millerton in 2007.
Their life in Millerton is full of creativity and community. Louise paints, while Mary crafts handmade birdhouses. In her professional life, Louise was a gym teacher and athletic director at Scarsdale High. “I was the first woman straight out of college that they ever hired,” she shared. But her passions have always extended beyond sports to painting, dancing, singing, and acting. The couple now participate in local art shows and open studios and take care of the upkeep of their home themselves. “This horseshoe neighborhood is just incredible,” said Louise, describing the welcoming community they’ve found on their street and in the village. As of now, their plan is to stay in their house and if need be, hire caregivers to come in and help. “Right now, we still do all the work out here with a young man who comes every Thursday. He does the stuff that’s impossible,” said Louise. “He spends four hours and he’s tall,” Mary laughed.
The couple had a commitment ceremony in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 2009 but they haven’t legally married. Louise shared, “I would like to have done that because I haven’t been married, but Mary wasn’t for it.”
“As a sociologist, I know that signing all those legal papers has an effect on people,” Mary laughed. “Things are not the same after and if you are like we are, you know, we’re reasonable, we discuss with each other what we want or don’t want and that kind of stuff. And then there’s no need, it seems to me.”
The couple have joint and separate accounts and a will delineating the legal rights for their shared property. Said Louise, “We are in a situation where we can provide adequately for ourselves, and we don’t require assistance.”
Independence has always been important to both Mary and Louise but as they age, they find they need one another in new ways that deepens their bond. For years, people have called them “The Divas” including their friend, the singer, Suede. “She called us that first,” said Louise. “We have it on our license plate! And then we also have…” Louise paused and turned to Mary for help remembering. “What do we have on our other license plate?”
“MaLou,” said Mary with a smile. “You know. Mary and Louise.”
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.