PORTLAND – Emily Eaton Moore died in the early hours of Monday, March 22, 2010, at her home in Portland, due to heart failure. She was born June 9, 1949, in Bangor, the daughter of Franklin W. and Florence “Polly” (Perry) Eaton. She spent early summers at her parents’ summer home in Buck’s Harbor on Penobscot Bay – a place she loved and returned to throughout her life. After graduating from Bangor High School in 1967, she attended Colby College. She married Richard Dow after his graduation from Colby in 1969 and they lived in South Portland until Richard’s death from melanoma in 1974. During those years Emily worked at Maine Savings Bank as a teller and eventually as personnel administrator. She later served as human resources director for the city of Portland, and was assistant director and acting director of Portland Museum of Art, as well as principal liaison with the architecture firm I.M. Pei & Partners during design and construction of the new museum. She graduated from the University of Southern Maine with degrees in English literature and art history, and earned a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing from Vermont College. She married Roger Woodman in 1981 and in 1984 they welcomed their daughter, Abigail James Woodman, into the world. Emily and Roger remained lifelong friends after their divorce, united by mutual respect and by love for Abby. While serving as director of admissions for Waynflete School and adviser to one of his children, Emily met and married Charles “Kip” Moore, and for the last 16 years of Em’s life they knitted together their respective families from homes in Portland and on Little Diamond Island in Casco Bay. A sailor since childhood, Em joined Kip in sailing the coast of Maine. On their first sail to Penobscot Bay, she guided the boat through the night from Rockland to Buck’s Harbor without charts or GPS, just saying she knew where she was going. They also sailed in the Caribbean and along the coasts of Thailand and the Mediterranean – often with Em’s father and mother or other family members in the crew – and in all those places Emily found people from Maine with friends in common back home. She remained a big supporter of the arts in Maine and was serving as a trustee of Portland Museum of Art at the time of her death. She was also an ardent supporter of the Pink Tulip Project benefiting the Women’s Cancer Fund at the Maine Cancer Foundation; Friends of Deering Oaks; and Spring Harbor Hospital, Westbrook, where she was a member of the outreach committee. Emily lived her life with grace and inimitable style. She struggled against bipolar disorder, but never let it define her. She had the rare courage to author her own life. She loved beautiful and exotic things – paintings, sea glass, beach stones, shells, vibrant rugs, delicate bird sculptures, a sheet of wrapping paper, a special Christmas ornament – and she surrounded herself and those she loved with these messages of unfolding spirit. With exquisite taste and an unerring sense of interior design, she kept her homes and her life awash in color and light. When her flame was bright she could light up a room and put anyone at ease. She was nonjudgmental, accepting, caring and loyal. She had a keen sense of the absurd – never more so than when recounting her own epic misadventures – and a deep compassion for human frailty. She sometimes snorted when she laughed. She wrote laugh-out-loud postcards in elegant italic script and outrageously funny e-mails that could cause the recipient to spew coffee on a computer screen. The luminous novel she never finished was forged from the same fire of adversity that shaped her wit, wisdom and resilience. She was a devoted wife, sister, aunt, stepmother, sister-in-law and daughter-in-law. She was an attentive caregiver to her mother and father during their long illnesses. To her daughter Abby, her pride and joy, she was best friend and loving mom. In her last five months she had taken on a new, prized role as doting grandmother and part-time caregiver to Abby’s son, Shawn Hendrickson, and making Shawn laugh had become one of Em’s greatest pleasures. Emily was predeceased by her mother and father. She is survived by her husband, Charles Moore; her daughter, Abigail and Abby’s partner, Justin Hendrickson, of Portland; her grandson, Shawn Hendrickson; sister, Gale Eaton of Wakefield, R.I.; brother, Jonathan F. Eaton and his wife, Mariellen L. Eaton, of Thomaston and their son, Matthew and daughter, Caitrin; sister, Deborah J. Eaton of Brunswick and her daughter, Allie Athearn; stepdaughter, Jennifer Vandekreeke and her husband, Robin, of Miami; stepson, Christopher Moore and his wife, Bree Lacasse, of Portland; stepson, Nathaniel Moore of Portland; stepgrandsons, stepgranddaughters, cousins, aunts and uncles. A memorial service will be held 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 6, at Portland Museum of Art with an outdoor memorial to be held next summer in South Brooksville on a date to be announced. Kindly omit flowers. Memorial gifts in Emily’s memory may be made to Portland Museum of Art, Seven Congress Square, Portland, ME 04101. Arrangements are by Jones, Rich & Hutchins Funeral Home, 199 Woodford St., Portland. For additional information and to sign Emily’s guest book, please visit www.jonesrichhutchins.com. <
EMILY EATON MOORE
