Obituary

Carol Hurlbutt Stocking

1927 – 2022

Carol Hurlbutt Stocking, 95, died peacefully in Wiliamstown, MA on February 26, 2022 with family at her bedside.

Nee Virginia Carol Hurlbutt, Carol was born on January 19, 1927 in Charleston, West Virginia, to Virginia Williamson of Charleston, and Frank Roy Hurlbutt of Gales Ferry, Connecticut.

On her father’s side, Carol was a Mayflower descendent of William Brewster.

Carol and her family moved from West Virginia to Greenwich, CT when she was ten years old. She attended the Rosemary Hall school (now Choate Rosemary Hall) and then Smith College in Northampton, MA and Columbia University in New York City.

Carol married her first husband, Robert Sumter Brawley, in 1950 and they had five children whom they raised in Hartford, Connecticut where Robert was a conductor, organist, and choral director.

Carol married her second husband, Fred Holly Stocking, Morris Professor of Rhetoric at Williams College, in 1982. They lived in a colonial house on North Street in Williamstown, known for many years by the large tree stump in the front yard which they decorated seasonally. Carol and Fred spent summers at a family compound in Lubec, Maine on the Bay of Fundy.

Although Carol thought of herself as “an ordinary person,” she will be remembered as anything but ordinary.

Her main passion was singing, which she began at the age of three and continued into her nineties, taking voice lessons for most of her life. She met her first husband at Smith College, where she sang in the glee club when he was the director. Carol sang in many choral performances over the years, including at Carnegie Hall in New York City. She sang in the choir at Trinity Episcopal Church in Hartford and in the choir at the First Congregational Church in Williamstown.

In Lubec, both Carol and Fred were deeply involved in the Summerkeys music and arts program, where she also performed.

At the age of 84, Carol made a recording of her favorite songs called “Songs of Innocence” as “a piece of memorabilia” for her family, teachers, and friends. In the introduction, she described her experience of singing as being a channel through which the music is born:

“Singing is about gestation, nourishing and then releasing,” she wrote. “If all goes well and things come together in the moment: A miracle. I live with the possibility that when I sing, a miracle can happen. This is a gift allowing me to participate in the creative process.”

Carol was a talented writer. She synthesized life experiences through poignant essays and prose, some of which were published in local newspapers. Her correspondence letters were rich in humor and insight, for those fortunate enough to be on her letter-writing radar.

Carol was also quietly a poet who left behind a collection of (mostly unseen) poems.

Carol was a gardener. She looked forward to planting bulbs and annuals each year, particularly her favorite waxed begonias. In early spring she harvested tender shoots from her mature asparagus patch, and kept a purple vase filled with cuttings from the lilac bush outside the kitchen window. Tomatoes, Swiss chard, and all manner of summer vegetables grew in her gardens, from which she ate all season.

Carol could be found on summer evenings sitting outside with a cold drink in one hand and the garden hose in the other, enjoying her yard and watering her plants.

Carol was an elegant swimmer who grew up swimming in the waters of the Long Island Sound . She particularly loved the sea. “Salt water cures everything,” she always said.

She was also a feisty tennis and badminton player. “As a teenager, some of the best conversations I had with my mother were over a rousing game of badminton on the front lawn,” one daughter remembered.

Carol loved to dance, any time, any place – with Fred, in the large field outside the house in Lubec or Country and Line dancing in the Berkshires; at weddings and parties; and, in elder years, at “Zumba Gold” classes. Carol and a granddaughter once took a belly dancing class together. She was 86 years old.

Carol enjoyed feeding family and friends. Back in the day when she sought creative ways to serve dinner to a family of seven every night, Carol subscribed to Gourmet Magazine. And became a gourmet cook.

“She had a knack for cooking,” one step-daughter said. “I was always impressed by how she had a natural talent…She just seemed to know what would work with the ingrediants used.”

Carol was an avid reader whose conversation reflected the breadth of her reading knowledge and intellectual curiosity. She loved words, and word games, and crossword puzzles, including the challenging New York Times crossword puzzles, which she always finished.

Carol loved home-made scented soap, and pussy willows, and brightly-colored alabaster eggs, of which she had a collection.

She loved farmers markets, and whimsical items that served no purpose other than to delight, and animals of every kind. In her later years, Carol wanted a cat but hesitated to take on that responsibility. When a stray cat adopted her, it was a perfect match; they loved each other unconditionally.

Above all, Carol had a gift for hospitality. Her door was always open and her house was a welcoming place of music (she at the piano), laughter, games by the warmth of the wood stove in winter and endless conversations at the large kitchen table over food and drink.

“I will always remember her playing the piano and singing,” a great-granddaughter said.

“She always had a sparkle about her and was up for anything,” one grandaughter said.

“I will always remember her laugh,” a great-grandson said. “She had the best laugh.”

“Every get together was a party!” a step-daughter said.

Through ups and downs, thick and thin, Carol was a person who did not complain. “I have had a good life,” she said recently, reflecting upon her 95 years.

Carol’s obituary can perhaps best be summed up in the words of one grandson who, as a young child, wrote this school essay about his grandmother:

“Her personality is funny and easy-going. She’ll let you do what you want to do. She’ll let you be who you are. She likes to have a good time. She likes to party.”

Indeed, Carol died with party bangles on her arm. Said one granddaugher, who was there, “It was an honor to be with Grandma as she transitioned…. May we all live a life full of joy and wear our party bangles till the end!”

Carol is predesceased by her husband Fred Holly Stocking and a step-son, David W. Stocking (Cynthia) of Fishers, IN.

She leaves five children: Karen B. Hunter (Patricia, deceased) of Sandwich, MA; Susan S. Rodman (Dell) of Williamstown, MA; Lisa A. Brawley of Ellington, CT; A. Hunter Brawley of Windsor, CT; and Bruce S. Brawley (Sara) of Westerly, RI. She leaves two step-children, Sally E. Stocking of Chicopee, MA and Kathryn H. Stocking-Koza (Frank) of Dalton, MA.

She also leaves seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren; five step-grandchildren, and 11 step-great-grandchildren.

Carol’s ashes will be interred at the Williams College Cemetery with her late husband, Fred, followed by a private celebration of life ceremony in the spring. The Flynn & Dagnoli Funeral Home, WEST CHAPELS, 521 West Main St. North Adams, Ma. are in care of arrangements.

Those who would like to make a donation in Carol’s memory are invited to donate to The Berkshire Humane Society in Pittsfield, MA or the Summerkeys program in Lubec, Maine.

If space is curved

And the universe goes bing bang

Then anyone who has loved

Knows the flaming fusion –

The sudden soddering

That only happens once

Every few billion years.

“Event,” by Carol Stocking