Rita McCreary
Stonington — Rita Lindell McCreary, of Tucson, Ariz. and Stonington, born April 28, 1931, passed away Sunday, Aug. 20, 2017, in Stonington. She was a prairie girl at heart.
Her grandfather was an original homesteader in the North Dakota Territory. Her father ran a smalltown law office and served as state’s attorney before being killed during the invasion of Normandy (1944). When her mother died of cancer less than a year later, at fourteen Rita became the eldest of three orphan children.
Her refuge was the piano. Coming of age, she traded North Dakota for New York to study with the master Carl Friedburg (student of Brahms). Music dominated her life, but going to college was part of the deal. She’d never heard of Barnard before enrolling but thrived there, taking a degree in geology.
Rita worked the first North Dakota oil boom for California Oil but kept up the piano. A master class with Ernst von Dohnányi, meant for a dozen students, turned into a threehour private lesson for Rita that inspired her return to New York. She apprenticed to Rosina Lhévinne at Julliard, and along the way acquired diplomas from the Dalcroze School of Dance and a master’s degree in education from Columbia — making a name for herself through the 1960s in the use of music and dance to enable early childhood education.
In 1966, Rita married the writer Edward McCreary (19282014) and later had one son, Iain. The three moved to Europe in 1972 where she immersed herself in travel and foreign cultures. She wrote but never published a work exploring cultural differences through the basics of manners, shopping habits, school customs, and even housekeeping styles.
The family returned stateside to the small town of Stonington. Asked to organize a children’s music program for the Westerly Center for the Arts, Rita became president of the board. Under her guidance, this sleepy corner of New England became a regular stop for world greats such as Yo-Yo Ma and Rudolph Serkin as they moved between New York and Boston. Rita also pushed for arts engagement in the local schools, a first time many of these kids had seen the likes of Alvin Ailey dancers or the Empire Brass Quintet.
In the process, Rita discovered she was good at organizing, budgeting and planning. That led into politics and an eventual post as chairman of Stonington’s Republican Town Committee and of the Town Charter Revision Committee. A regular voice at planning and zoning meetings she made rational arguments, stepped on toes, appealed to reason, got frustrated … but throughout tried to make her town a better place.
In 1987 (aged 56), Rita returned to school for an MBA at Simmons. “It was fascinating to be in the mix” she said, “seeing the older female corporate attitudes versus the younger.”
Asked last year to write of her life for Barnard, Rita closed with, “This dry recital cannot capture the adventures, the intellectual discoveries, the joy and humor that filled my life with the amazing Edward. The memories live, but the magic is gone.”
Rita died of pancreatic cancer on Sunday, Aug. 20, 2017. She is loved, and will be missed.