Loving Parent, fully present
Bettina Whitney Hawkinson Pratt of Boston, died peacefully in her sleep, in her own home, on September 20th. She was born in New York City on April 16, 1928.
Tina was very close to her mother and father, John and Laura Hawkinson, and to her brother, John. Her childhood was filled with music, art, books and nature. She spent many happy years at her beloved “Studio” where her father taught her the names of flowers and butterflies. She was always at home in the natural world – mountains or ocean.
Tina attended Garrison Forest School and Bennett Junior College. She learned piano composition from her beloved teacher, Mr. Whitmer. Playing the piano was a daily joy well into her 94th year; a facility that remained as others fell away.
She volunteered when able. In the 1940’s, she designed and taught the first music course for deaf children at The American School for the Deaf in Hartford. She played the piano & the children felt heretofore unknown music through their feet and their hands. During World War II, Tina was a Red Cross volunteer at Hartford Hospital. Her memories of the first day include the Hartford Circus Fire.
In 1951, she married Marsom Pratt from Plainfield, New Jersey. In the ensuing years, she had three children “her treasures.”
Marsom went on to become successful investment banker doing much financing with MA HEFA for hospitals and universities in Massachusetts.
Tina instilled a love of reading in us all. We grew up with no television and spent long hours by her side being read to from the Wizard of Oz and other books. When we reported we were bored, she said, “Bored? Go outside. Snakes, toads, moss, butterflies, grasses trees, and thunderstorms. Ain’t Mother Nature grand?!!”
She filled our home with music. When she played Rachmaninoff or Grieg piano concertos, the top up, the sound went right through you, particularly if one lay right underneath the piano.
She balanced family life with her passions- language, travel, opera, living through her piano, illustrating her family life in letters to her parents. At night, Tina cooked dinner, singing along to broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera.
She continued to volunteer patterning a young girl with cerebral palsy, teaching English to recent immigrants in their homes in the South End of Boston, sitting with the terminally ill illness in hospital settings and with shut-ins.
Tina was fervently political. Raised in a politically conservative family, she declared herself a Democrat and a Socialist. She leafletted in Cohasset for democratic presidential candidates in the 60’s and 70’s with at least one child in tow.
She attended the Unitarian Church in Cohasset where she formed a lifelong friendship with the Reverend Roscoe Trueblood, a Quaker Unitarian minister.
Tina was an early member of the Vedanta Centre, where she met her dear teacher, Bapu and Gayatri Devi, the spiritual leader of the Cohasset Ashram from 1940 til her death in 1995. The ashrama is a non-sectarian place of worship, rooted in Hinduism, dedicated to all the religions of the world, where people of different faiths may come together and worship the One Spirit Who is called by many names. She was a member of this community for decades.
Tina spent her last years happily at home in Boston or in Delray Beach, Florida, cared for by her beloved caregivers: Jennifer, Onyi, Patty, Jean, Medgine, Carla, Dorcas and Rose Marie and enjoying the company of friends and family.
She received incredible medical care at the Beth Israel Hospital from Drs. Mitch Rabkin, Stephen Come and Mark Peppercorn, among others, over the last 50 years. They were her doctors and her friends.
Tina is survived by her three children and their partners in life: Laura Pratt and James Woodberry, Drusilla and Stephen Pratt-Otto, and Marsom Pratt and Perry Lickfield; her four grandchildren and one spouse: Samuel Pratt-Otto, Langford PrattOtto, Kathleen Whitney Pratt and Jenny and Curtis Kahn; and her two great-grandsons: Charles and George Kahn.
Her effect on her family and caregivers was profound. Their lives and our lives were enriched by her joy of all things beautiful, her curiosity, her gratitude, her strength, her sense of humor and her unfailingly positive and gracious manner.
There will be a Memorial Service at a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to: The Vedanta Centre, 130 Beachwood Street, Cohasset, MA 02025.