Constance Holden, Sailor And Artist

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Constance Isabella (Wigglesworth) Holden, who was an accomplished
sailor, artist, and a 29-year art teacher at Buckingham Browne &
Nichols in Cambridge, Massachusetts, died Monday, November 22, 2004,
at Massachusetts General Hospital, two days after she choked on a
piece of food while celebrating her 88th birthday with family at a
Boston, Massachusetts, restaurant.

"Mother never stopped embracing life," said her son, Jonathan of
Newburyport.

She lived in Cambridge for 54 years and had a summer home in
Manchester-by-the-Sea, where she cultivated and cared for showplace
gardens.

Mrs. Holden sailed the world with her husband, Edward Singleton
Holden, an inventor and manufacturing engineer, and made sketches of
the exotic ports they visited. Her drawings of one such trip, to the
Greek islands, were compiled in a book.

Mrs. Holden was a proponent of the arts, as a teacher and as a 50-year
member of the Cambridge Art Association. "Connie was the lead person
in the art department," said Peter Gunness of Belmont, the headmaster
at what became Buckingham Browne & Nichols during Mrs. Holden's tenure
there, from 1954 to 1983. ''She was a very strong person, in the best
sense of the word."

He recalled that when Mrs. Holden arrived at the private school, it
was the all-boys' Browne & Nichols. She was the entire art department.

"In those days," Gunness said, "it was rare to have a strong arts
program in a boys' school, and Connie was a strong voice."

When the school merged with the all-girls' Buckingham School in 1974,
he said, Mrs. Holden continued to promote the arts.

She did the same through the Cambridge Art Association. "Connie cared
about students and was a wonderful mentor to many emerging young
artists," said Kathryn Schultz, the group's executive director. "She
was very supportive of the association's work."

Some of Mrs. Holden's oils and watercolors, including landscapes,
seascapes, and still lifes, were exhibited in the association's salon
show in September. After the death of her husband in 1995, she told
friends she had lost her enthusiasm for painting. But, Schultz said,
she had recently signed up for an art course at the Cambridge Center
for Adult Education and was at class last week.

Mrs. Holden was born in Walpole to Frank and Isabella (Councilman)
Wigglesworth. She had twin younger brothers. Although Mrs. Holden's
father ran a working farm in Walpole, Jonathan Holden said, he also
raced speed boats and taught art at the Cambridge School of Weston.

Her upbringing was "kind of Victorian," her son said. "Much time was
spent in the nursery with a nanny. At tea time, she was dressed up to
be presented to her parents."

After finishing at Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Mrs. Holden
graduated from the Cambridge School and then from Bennington College
in Vermont, where she majored in art. During a college hiatus, she
went to Paris to study with Fernand Leger, the cubist painter. Mrs.
Holden was influenced by his bold, blunt colors.

She met her future husband in Maine, where he and some friends pulled
into port in a sailboat and invited her for a sail. They were married
for 58 years and sailed together -- chartering boats in Australia, the
Caribbean, and the Mediterranean -- until a year before he died. The
waters off Maine and the North Shore were regular cruising grounds.

By all accounts, Mrs. Holden was feisty and fiercely independent. She
was, her son said with affection, ''a crusty old Yankee." She was also
the matriarch of a large extended family.

After a mild stroke about a year ago, Mrs. Holden showed her strong
will. "Connie was told she might need a walker but said, 'Absolutely
not!'" said Mrs. Holden's sister-in-law, Hope Wigglesworth of Ipswich.
"She was so determined she went to exercise class and soon could walk
without it."

After her driver's license was revoked following the stroke, she
fought to get it back and did. She referred to the stroke as "an
incident" and would not allow anyone to use the word ''stroke,"
friends said.

This past summer, as she did every summer, she took her daily swim at
Singing Beach at Manchester-by-the-Sea. She had had taken up Tai Chi.
She had no intention, friends said, of going to a nursing home,
viewing that as a sign of surrender.