Ann Schon, Artist, 104
DGH
Mrs. Schon, who continued to paint, play golf, and drive a car well
into her 90s, left her family with many other stories at the time of
her death Saturday, March 12, 2005, in the Brookline, Massachusetts,
home she bought with her husband in 1934, at the age of 104.
Ann (Mason) Schon was 24 when she packed her art supplies and left
Worcester, Massachusetts, for New York City, New York. She had earned
her freedom after 10 years as a loving surrogate mother to her four
younger siblings.
It was 1924. The flapper era was at its peak. Many young women
shortened their skirts, bobbed their hair, and danced the Charleston.
An intrepid few struck out on their own.
Mrs. Schon may not have fully embraced the flapper lifestyle, her
family said, but she she expressed her independence. Her grandson
Andrew of Brookline recalls "Grandma Ann's" story about a coed
skinny-dipping episode off Long Island during the five years she lived
in New York. That was very daring in those days.
In 1999, Mrs. Schon, asked to reflect on her 100 years, told the Globe,
"It's been a century of wonderful scientific adventures. But I've also
lived through two world wars, many small wars, and the Holocaust. So
really, as I look back, I think it's really been a wretched century."
Mrs. Schon was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, one of five children
of David and Dora (Neiman) Mason. She studied Latin and German at
Worcester High School. She enjoyed outdoor sports, went to the YWCA
regularly, danced, sang, and played tennis. When Mrs. Schon was almost
14, her mother died of leukemia. She took on her mother's role, helping
to raise her siblings with her father.
"She was very close to her siblings and father, and constantly told
stories of their happy life together, despite the tragic loss of their
mother," said Nancy Schon of West Newton, her daughter-in-law, who
created the "Make Way for Ducklings" sculptures in the Public Garden.
"When Ann learned to drive at 16, her father decided to buy a Ford. She
objected on the grounds that Henry Ford was 'anti-Semitic' and asked
her father to buy a Dodge instead. He did."
Mrs. Schon enrolled in the School of the Worcester Art Museum and
graduated in 1919. She and a former classmate became pioneering female
entrepreneurs by opening a commercial art studio that provided sketches
of merchants' wares for advertisements.
In New York, Mrs. Schon lived at a residence for women involved with
the visual and performing arts. She studied painting at the Art
Students League. She found a job as a designer at a lingerie company.
Nancy Schon said her mother helped design a line of lingerie with lace
inserts and appliqués.
Mrs. Schon had an independent spirit. When her employer told her she
would have to punch a clock, she objected and won. Often, she told him,
her creative ideas came at midnight.
She moved back to Massachusetts in 1929 and, after a 10-year courtship,
married Boston lawyer Marcus David Henry Schon. While rearing their
son, Donald Alan, and caring for their home, she continued to paint and
work as a decorator. "Ann always dressed stylishly on a Filene's
Basement budget," Nancy Schon said.
Mrs. Schon had a knack for relating to people. Living on her own after
the death of her husband in 1975, Mrs. Schon welcomed visitors. Andrew
Schon said that her family and friends could drop in any time for
conversation and advice around her kitchen table. For many years, Mrs.
Schon also volunteered as a driver for Greater Boston Aid to the Blind.
When she was 90, Mrs. Schon taught her grandson how to play golf. Asked
the secret to her longevity, she always replied, ''cleanliness in all
aspects," Andrew Schon said, possibly a carryover from her years of
keeping order among her siblings, all of whom she outlived.
As Mrs. Schon's 100th birthday approached, she told the Globe that it
was "unfair to be living to 100" when her son had died at 67. "Yes,"
she said, "very unfair."
She leaves four grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
Boston Globe
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