Spoken by Barbara Booth Berwick at Lois Booth Remembrance November 9, 2019
I’m very honored to be speaking today about my mother, Lois Booth. It was a daunting task to collect the words. AND it’s daunting to speak the words in front of so many others who loved her too. We’ll have to get through this together.
In SO many ways, our Mom had a really BIG life! And she was a really BIG influence in our lives. Her kids, her extended family, her community, the many people she met and mentored and took under her wing.
She had many passions and interests and she pursued them with great tenacity and conviction. And yet, as big as her life and accomplishments were in some ways, her life was also very tightly focused right here, centered in Concord/Canterbury, around all of us. Her children, her extended family, and her community.
I think we can say with confidence, Lois had a formidable intellect. And to many she was a true visionary. Her husband, Don, called her thinking “uninhibited”, and he truly delighted in it. Together they mapped a highly original course for their lives, they strove with seemingly limitless energy…. to bring about good. Peace and justice in the world, and loving care for their family, for their community and for the earth.
In so many ways Lois was far ahead of her times. I always felt she sort of “invented” things that now are commonplace. Health foods, organic gardening, natural childbirth, recycling, and yes, even aerobics. Ok, I know she didn’t invent them, but she sure was a pioneer!
Lois Booth was raised to be an independent thinker by her parents, who encouraged her to form her own ideas rather than adopt theirs. In high school she began to have some strong anti-war convictions. She studied about WWI and saw photos that appalled her at the inhumanity. She made her way to Antioch College, a liberal arts college which was a perfect match for her (emphasis on liberal). There we know, from letters she kept, her personal and intellectual life flourished. She met people with similar pacifist beliefs, she studied about the value of small communities, and she was exposed to the Quaker Friends Meeting style of worship.
Shortly after leaving college she met the love of her life, Don Booth. Dad was a man of similar pacifist convictions and interests, and together they started a life.
They settled in Canterbury in the 50’s with some like-minded community-oriented pacifist friends. And they proceeded to start their family while Don established a building business. Together they joined the Concord Friends Meeting, which was a lifelong important part of their spiritual and social lives.
While Lois definitely had the brains and tenacity to achieve success in an outside profession, in the early years she chose to focus largely on family. She had 6 kids to raise. And a husband who had started his own business to support. In her own words, on leaving college she wrote:
“I expect my family to also be my vocation. Taking care of a man and a house, and the four or five children I hope to have will certainly be a full time job.” By the way, I am her sixth child. She was also an overachiever.
What was it like to grow up with Lois Booth as your mother? Well, it was most definitely never dull.
She wanted US to grow up to be independent minded. And healthy, and fulfilled and happy in our lives and professions. And she worked at it, very actively providing us with all sorts of growth and learning experiences from a really young age.
First of all, because of all their interests, our home life was the very essence of “counter-culture”. Not much “normal” about us as far as I could tell. Actually, the area on Shaker Rd where we lived was nicknamed “Queer Hill” by some of the Canterbury folks. That in itself taught us some character!
Starting with our actual births, Mom chose a visionary path. She wanted to have her children naturally, without drugs or anesthesia, and found not many doctors at the time willing to help. So she asked her sister Alison’s physician husband to deliver her babies. In 1948, when my brother Christopher was born naturally, she popped up immediately after his birth and snapped photos of the first minutes of his life. She had smuggled a camera in.
Mom was early into health foods and organic gardening, and this became a real passion. She read and studied everything she could about it, and she had legendary success. At the height she had at least a couple acres of amazing gardens, and all sorts of natural methods to grow the beautiful vegetables and fruits that nourished us. But I would say that some of her methods were more surprising than others.
One weekend a friend of my brother David’s came to visit. Mom served Tiger Lily flower fritters, from her garden, for dinner. The next morning, when David’s friend came down to breakfast, Mom was in the kitchen with a big bowl of beetles she was busily mashing up. She greeted him with a big smile, “ready for breakfast”? Of course, WE know the beetles were being made into a paste to keep some critter from the garden. But poor David’s friend didn’t know that.
Although there was no packaged or processed food in our home, there were nonetheless, always delicious snacks to greet us when we got home from school. Apples and peanut butter. Carrots and peanut butter. Celery and peanut butter. Her homemade whole wheat bread with peanut butter and honey. She ground her own flour to make the sturdy bread each week, the peanut butter was homemade, and the honey was from their own beehives. Yum!
At some point, Mom got worried that Dad wasn’t getting enough to eat, as he was always running from one construction job to another, seldom stopping for enough nutrition. SO, she concocted a tasty and nutritious snack, which became nicknamed a “Vitablivit”. It was made from something like peanut butter, dates, chopped nuts with a large dollop of brewer’s yeast for extra nutrition. She rolled them into balls and wrapped them with waxed paper, and she made sure Dad had them with him at all times so he could munch on them while rushing around. They turned out to have remarkably long shelf life, which was an added benefit. Steve, who worked with my father, found out they came in handy when he had forgotten lunch. He figured out he could dig around in Dad’s pockets or tool box or glove compartment, and probably find a Vitablivit or two to tide him over.
As the years went on, it was evident my Mom’s definition of family was very broad. As much as she was there for us kids, she was also there for so many others, friends of her kids, neighborhood kids, children from Quaker meeting, friends with common interests. The house was always open. Her heart was always open… to listen, to help, and to encourage. She seemed to have a bottomless reserve of understanding and caring, not just for close family and friends, but for everyone she came into contact with.
Her strong faith and connection to her Quaker spiritual community was always very much a presence in our childhood. But she didn’t press it on us (although I do remember getting an extra dime allowance if I attended Sunday Quaker meeting). When we asked about God, her response was usually about love. She told me once when I asked, God feels like a river of love. To her grandson Travis she simply answered, “God IS love”.
As you might imagine, our household and family life was generally peaceful, but with 6 independent minded children, there were some occasions of spirited conflict or stress. At those times Lois always had the calm voice, listening carefully to what others were saying, considering things quietly for a bit, then suggesting a compassionate and reasonable solution. Throughout the years, in situations involving personal conflict, some of us have thought "what would Lois do?" And in this way she continued to help us gain calm, and to find a pathway to a peaceful solution.
Mom’s “uninhibited” thinking was evidenced in the Shaker Road house itself. As the family grew, as extended family, friends, and an occasional draft resistor or two came to stay, the house just seemed to expand from within. During one renovation, Mom convinced Dad that Jon’s bedroom could be taken from the top 5’ of the 13’ entrance hall. This became known as the “cubbyhole room”. Jon could climb into it quite happily from the living room bookshelf space. Other additions were built, several cabins were constructed. All to accommodate the growing circle of “family” which surrounded our Mom.
And with Mom, everything was possible. She was incredibly interested and encouraging in every passion, every enthusiasm, every endeavor we thought we might want to undertake. She never let lack of money stand in the way. And there WAS always plenty of lack of money.
It seemed she would consider first what she thought was “right” or good. Then she would think about how reality might arrange itself around that. An example of this is when Heather wanted to go away to a Quaker boarding school, although it was at a time of particularly low finances. With quiet ingenuity Mom undertook to take Heather on a tour of all the schools anyway, only to find the obvious facts, that even with maximum scholarship there still wasn’t enough money. Miraculously, months later they got a call from The Meeting School. Did Heather still want to come, and “never mind about the money”. Somehow things had miraculously arranged themselves to give Heather this chance.
Actually, all the Booth children were given the opportunity to do some pretty amazing things, private schools and colleges, tuition to Outward Bound, musical instruments, start-up expenses for schemes, travel in Europe. If you didn’t know us, you might just think we were rich. But, no, it was just Mom’s faith, her patience to “think a little further” about the possibilities, and her strong desire to help us find our paths in life. I don’t know if anyone could “think a little further” about possibilities than Lois Booth, as she patiently sought to manifest what she believed was right.
In the late seventies, supporting Chris’ growing interest in the possibilities of computers, Mom and Dad bought a Heathkit computer that Chris rapidly assembled. Mom justified the expense, thinking it might also be a way for Jon to become computer savvy. She had heard from a friend that companies like to hire musicians as computer programmers because they always seem to do so well. So, they hired Jon to write software for Dad’s solar projects. Which by the way, he also had to teach himself how to do. Sure enough, those programming skills that Jon learned turned into a pretty good career. Right up until the end of her life, Mom loved to check in with all of us on how our work was going. “What are you doing these days” she would say. When she asked that of Jon, he would repeat the story of how she helped him get into computers, and how he has been doing that work ever since. “So, thank you Mom” he would say in closing, to which she would always reply, “and thank Chris too”.
I got this kind of attention from her also. When I expressed an early interest in becoming a professional hairdresser, she was very supportive and sat quietly for hours while I styled her hair. Later, as I became more of a caregiver to her in the last years of her life, she decided that only I should be allowed to cut her hair. Of course, I lived in California, and she was very clever. She knew that my desire to keep her looking ship shape would ensure that I visit her every few months. We both enjoyed that.
As her children grew older and required less attention, she began to be much more active in passions and activities beyond our immediate home and family.
She became a real estate broker to help sell houses Dad built. She took on an active advisory role in Dad’s business, which had expanded to solar building, consulting, and book writing. She was very supportive of Dad’s many enthusiasms, but always there was the need to somehow help keep them afloat financially. You see, making money wasn’t always top of mind to Dad. She modestly wrote at that time, “some kind of mysterious gyroscope seems to balance our financial ups and downs to keep us swimming, always with our heads just barely above water, but never sinking”. I think we know what powered the mysterious gyroscope.
Even as she took on more money-making activities, buying and selling land and properties, she also contributed so much to the Canterbury community. She and Dad donated several large parcels of conservation land to the town, one of which is now a very popular beach on the Merrimack river. Among other donations, they also gave land to build a Quaker Meeting House in Canterbury, the first for the Concord Friends meeting, which had been meeting in rented space all those years. To me, as I watched, it really was clear that making money was merely a means to an end, to give more of themselves to the projects, causes, people and community they valued so much.
But more than anything at this time, I saw, that as important as her family and community were to her, Lois Booth knew she had a much bigger calling. She wrote of herself, “Working for peace is my calling, my mission. It is ME.” So, with the belief that there are better alternatives to war, she tirelessly worked for world peace and justice. She helped establish a NH office of the American Friends Service Committee, which spawned NH Peace Action. The last chapters of her life were heavily committed to these worthy pursuits.
Her husband Don also shared this passion and they complemented each other very well. I do like to think of Mom as the brains behind the operation (though Dad was certainly no slouch). Our father often was the public face of the team, enjoying the spotlight much more than Mom. But it was Mom who I watched working endlessly, and tirelessly, mostly behind the scenes, to raise money, and research issues, and educate, and mentor, many future activists.
From my vantage point, straddled between the “counter culture” world of my parents and the more mainstream life I chose, I was able to observe Mom’s keen understanding that it was necessary to closely listen to and understand the opinions and problems of others, for true progress to be made. So, in her loving way, even as she handed out pamphlets on Main Street and tried to educate people about alternatives to war, she often spent much more time listening than talking. In this way, I am sure, she found a way to open many hearts and minds to consider things a little differently.
In fact, a poem she taught me as a child when I was getting some teasing from kids seems to speak to this. Paraphrased to what has stuck in my mind, and helped me all these years, “if someone draws a circle that leaves you out, you can just draw a bigger circle that includes them”. Lois Booth drew very big circles.
Mom, thank you for all you taught us, and for how you helped to prepare us for the world. Thank you for all you did to help your friends and your neighbors, even when they didn’t see eye to eye with your beliefs. Thank you for knowing that “people need flowers” and for all the beautiful flowers, that you grew, and that you shared. Thank you for your life’s work, and for what you gave to humanity. Thank you for your endless love and compassion. You accomplished so much, and you have left us with so much.
Thank you for teaching us the power of positive healing thoughts. When we were kids and troubled or sick, Mom would sit by us quietly and focus very intensely on sending us positive healing thoughts, which to me felt like a warm blanket of love. Even as we got older and grown up, some of us used to quietly make sure that Mom knew there was something going on, it felt so comforting. My brother Steve suggested to me recently, if it worked so well before, maybe it will work even better now!
So, I’d like to close with reading some more of Mom’s own words, written shortly after her own mother passed.
“I have been realizing these last few days how much I have taken my mother for granted, especially how I took for granted the depth and steadiness of her life. I think we do easily take for granted the greatest gifts of life. Like sunshine and rain and trees and our own marvelous capacities; to move and talk and think and feel. I find that the shock of death has brought with it a vivid and tender sense of awareness and appreciation of the kind and gentle and useful and beautiful ways of my mother’s life. There is sadness in the sense of loss. And there are twinges of regret at the memory of kindnesses I might have done but didn’t. But greater than these is my gratitude that her life was full and rich and that we all shared much happiness. I like thinking that nothing is lost, that every good act has touched and altered, whether little or much, those of us she came in contact with. And that she has become a part of ourselves, as we in turn pass a part of ourselves into those around us.”
Thank you. Mom.
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Canterbury, New Hampshire 03224-2043 USA