Marie Prentice

CORNWALL — Marie Prentice, 86, died at Sharon Hospital on May 14, 2018.

Born in New York City in 1932, she was the daughter of Eleanor (Latane) and William Trusdale Bissell.

She spent a year in Paris before graduating from Smith College  Phi Beta Kappa in 1954. Her first job was as a research assistant for the CIA in Washington, D.C., followed by a similar role in New York for the Far East-America Council.

Music, and singing in particular, was always an important part of her life. She admired a wide range of artists including Mercedes Sosa, Pete Seeger and Bobby McFerrin. In 1963 with her husband, Tim Prentice, she traveled to Thailand, India and East Africa on a cultural exchange grant from the State Department to perform folk songs in English and the native languages.

In 1968 she went to Columbia’s Teachers College for an MA degree and began teaching at I.S. 44 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. After eight years in an experimental open classroom program during a difficult time for public education in New York, she retired and took a course in pottery to decompress. 

While still living in the city she organized a group of amateur vocalists she called “Voice Jam.”  She moved to Cornwall full time in the mid 80s and sang with the Kent Singers, the Crescendo Chorus and the UCC choir, and founded the Coltsfoot Chorus. 

In the Reagan era, Marie protested the U.S. policy in Central America and traveled to Nicaragua with Witness for Peace. She served on the board of the John Bissell Scholars Fund of The Fabindia School and, in Cornwall, on the boards of Women’s Support Services, the Cornwall Democratic Town Committee, the Cornwall Association and the Cornwall Housing Corporation. She initiated the Cornwall Talent Show to raise money for the Cornwall Library.

She took up poetry late in life and attended a number of poetry workshops in the area. She particularly admired the work of Elizabeth Bishop and Galway Kinnell. In 2006 she published a collection titled “Singing Into Jars” and was working on a second collection.

Her husband of 58 years; two daughters, Nora and Phoebe; and two grandchildren, Zeke and Zoe Homer, survive her.

A memorial gathering is being planned for September.

Memorial donations may be made to the Cornwall Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Services, P.O. Box 180, West Cornwall, CT 06796.