Reardon, Ann “Deeter” (Leich) of Hingham formerly of Quincy and Evansville, Indiana on August 30, 2006 at the age of 92. Beloved wife of the late Paul C. Reardon. Devoted daughter of the late Herbert and Marcella (Jacobi) Leich of Evansville, Indiana. Loving mother of Martha A.R. Bewick of Hingham, David C. Reardon of Haymarket,VA and Thomas P. Reardon of Newton. Ann is predeceased by her beloved children Bobby Reardon and Jane Labys. Cherished “Muffy” to five grandchildren, three step-grandchildren and two great grandchildren. She is also survived by many loving cousins, nephews and nieces and their spouses and children and friends. Relatives and friends are respectfully invited to attend the funeral from the Pyne Keohane Funeral Home, 21 Emerald St., HINGHAM, Saturday at 9 AM. Funeral Mass in Saint Paul’s Church, Hingham at 10AM. Visiting hours Friday 4-8 PM. Burial in Mt. Wollaston Cemetery, Quincy. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the South Shore Conservatory of Music in Hingham, where she was a founding director, or to the South Shore YMCA, where she was a volunteer and director, or to St. Paul’s Church, where she was a Minister of Welcome. ___________________________________ Ann “Deeter” Leich Reardon of Hingham passed away on Wednesday, August 30, surrounded by her family and her pastor at St. Paul’s Church, just as they finished singing the old Latin hymn “In paradisum…” “may the angels lead you into paradise.” She would have celebrated her 93rd birthday on Sunday, September 3. A kind and generous and loving person, Ann was born in Evansville Indiana to Herbert and Marcella (Jacobi) Leich. She grew up in a family full of music, and German traditions, like Christmas cookie baking. For 37 years, she baked German Christmas cookies with three generations of cousins, most recently at a Bed and Breakfast in Vermont last December. Over the years she kept her earliest friendships, with friends, and with her fifteen first cousins, including Martha Leich Parkhurst of Baltimore, and John Foster Leich of Cornwall Connecticut. Her early schooling was unconventional, including an “open air” school, where the windows were kept open, and children wore Eskimo suits during their classes. She attended Wellesley College for a year, but transferred to the National College of Education in Chicago to finish her degree, due to the financial pressures on her family from the depression. There she worked as a elementary school teacher for families, including the Farm School. Her first grade class was responsible for tending six sheep, the second grade goats, and the third grade a pony. Classes reflected the farm interests. The first graders also sheared and carded wool. There she played the recorder in small ensembles with the Dushkin family. This included a concert for Igor Stravinsky. She met her late husband, Paul Cashman Reardon, an Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, through friends in Chicago on the day he finished his bar exam. They met in 1935, and were married in 1939. Meanwhile, she taught, and traveled. In 1937, she joined her brother, composer Roland Leich, on a 2000-mile bicycle trip to England and Germany during the Nazi period. He had won the Bearns Prize for composition, and had invited his sister to join him. Their trip included trips to music festivals, and a transfer of papers and ownership in a family business to German cousins, which was dangerous, since it went against Nazi instructions to those with property in foreign countries. Other trips included kayaking down the Thames in folding kayaks with her Hingham friend Helen Ingram, a 10,000-mile 6-week cross-country camping trip with her two families, including four adults and seven children, and several trips with her husband to Great Britain and Australia when he participated in the Anglo-American Legal Exchanges. She was famous for her brownies, which she baked as gifts for family members and friends. Cardinal Cushing declared in a letter that these were “heavenly brownies”. More recently she delivered a box of brownies to the Hingham Fire Department after they fixed her flat tire, and, later, after they picked her up after a fall, and taken her home. It was the Hingham Fire Department that took her to South Shore Hospital after she suffered a stroke last Friday. Her granddaughters Lottie and Polly have learned her recipe, and are continuing her traditions After her marriage, she and her husband moved to Quincy. They had five children, two of whom predeceased her. She lost her three-year old son, Bobby, in an automobile accident, and her daughter Jane Reardon Labys in the crash of TWA 800. She brought her kindergarten and first grade skills to her old neighborhood, and children loved painting on easels in the family backyard. Ann Reardon was also known for her photographs. Her interest started when she won the silver badge for photography from the St. Nicholas Magazine when she was 10. Over the years she chronicled her family, making scrapbooks and albums for more distant family members. In Quincy, she and her husband were active in the community. This included their involvement with the Community Chest and Red Feather, her Presidency of the Quincy League of Women Voters, her directorships at the Eventide Home, the Quincy Public Library, the South Shore YMCA (where she was honored with the Hodgkinson Award for her volunteer work, and her Presidency of the Quincy Homemakers, now part of Partners VNA. She was also a Cub Scout den mother for her sons, and their friends. She was a model for her sister-in-law, artist Mary Reardon, and she and her son Tom were the Madonna and Child for a holy card for the Carroll Center for the Blind in the 1940s. After she and her husband moved to Hingham in 1962, they became active in that community, including the Committee to Save Worlds End, and the Trustees of Reservations. She was a founding director of the South Shore Conservatory, some 36 years ago. She kept up her interests in the societies she was part of, including the Pilgrim Society, the Quincy Historical Society and the Hingham Historical Society. She was a member of the Union Club of Boston. Until the VNA Unique Boutique closed its doors this summer, she was an active volunteer there, as well as a Minister of Welcome at St. Paul’s Church in Hingham. She also enjoyed her volunteer work with the Hingham Historical Society’s Old Ordinary. She was a founding member of the Ann Harvard Society. She served Meals on Wheels into her 80s, driving lunches to senior citizens who were 10 years younger than she. She continued to play in recorder ensembles over the years, and was occasionally called upon to perform for occasions on the South Shore. One Christmas she and her quartet performed in the bay window of Talbot’s in Hingham Square, and at the Forbes Museum in Milton. Ann Reardon was a Boston Symphony subscriber, and had enjoyed the bus trips from the South Shore to Boston. Last month she traveled to Tanglewood to hear her daughter Martha sing with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in the Mozart Requiem. Her calendar was legendary, and her nieces, nephews and friends would hear from her at birthdays and holiday times. Her family enjoyed summers at Boot Pond in Plymouth, where the family still owns a cottage. She would have celebrated her 93rd birthday on Sunday, September 3, and the family is planning to celebrate her on that day. Over the years, her husband’s law clerks and judicial and legal associates became her friends as well, and she would assist her husband in his law clerk reunions, or testing fish chowder recipes for his “Fish Chowder Case” opinion, or cleaning up after his encounters with beach-plum jelly making She loved Hummels, angels, Mozart, Christmas and chocolate, and classical music. She had recently enjoyed participating in a memoir class at the Hingham Senior Center, which gave her the opportunities to pull together her early memories. In recent months, she had become more frail, but loved to visit the village coffee shops and restaurants, and to see the children coming from classes at the Community Center. She was young at heart, and beloved by her extended family and friends. She leaves her daughter Martha Bewick of Hingham, son David C. Reardon of Haymarket Virginia, and Thomas P. Reardon of Newton and their spouses, five grandchildren and their spouses, three step-grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She learned while in the hospital that her grandson and his wife were expecting a new child, which gave her joy. She leaves two first cousins, Martha Leich Parkhurst of Towson Maryland, and John Foster Leich of Cornwall Connecticut, and many young cousins, nieces and nephews and their children, and many many loving friends. Her granddaughter said “she always represented happiness to me.”
