Mrs. Richard S. Jackson (Mary F. Mathes), 97, of Vero Beach, FL, died April 7, 2016, at her summer residence in York Harbor, ME.

 

Born in 1918 in Boston, MA, to Mr. and Mrs. James Monroe Mathes (Ruth Dearborn), Mrs. Jackson spent her early school years at the Buckley School in Great Neck, NY. She graduated from the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, CT, in 1936, and from Vassar College in 1940. She married her husband, the late Richard S. Jackson, a Dartmouth graduate of 1939, on September 14, 1940, at Christ Church in Greenwich, CT. They enjoyed 63 years of married life until his death in 2003. In their later years together, they travelled widely to compete in senior tennis tournaments.

 

While living in Greenwich, Louisville, KY, Pittsfield, MA and Vero Beach, Mrs. Jackson was very active in volunteer work. She held many offices in local garden clubs, and served as assistant chairman of the finance committee and as a member of several other national committees of the Garden Club of America. She was a board chairman of the Berkshire County Home for Aged Women, and was a nurse’s aide in Hartford, CT, in the early 1940s.  Mrs. Jackson was an active sportswoman, a skier and golfer who played tennis up to the age of 90. She loved to play bridge with three active bridge groups in Florida. In her last summers in Maine, where she had outlived all her partners, she was down to one group consisting of three other much younger women.

 

She was active in many other clubs, including the Round Hill and Belle Haven clubs of Greenwich, the Country Club of Pittsfield, the Lenox Club, the York Harbor Reading Room, York Golf and Tennis Club, Agamenticus Yacht Club, and the Moorings Club of Vero Beach.

 

Mrs. Jackson is survived by her three children, James Mathes Jackson and wife, Valerie, Mary French Jackson, and Richard S. Jackson Jr. and wife, Linda; grandchildren Katie Jackson, Elizabeth Werbe, Sara Jackson Chaplin and husband, John, Benjamin Jackson and wife, Lauren, Lucas Jackson and wife, Victoria; and three great-grandchildren, Audrey, Jameson, and Walker Jackson. She was predeceased by her husband; a brother, James M. Mathes Jr., killed in World War II; and two younger sisters, Harriet Mathes Rohde and Ruth Mathes Gerrity.