Our mother was a force of nature who never shied from voicing her opinion, vacationing in war zones or bending the world to her will. She walked fast, didn’t have an inside voice, knew what she wanted, and could not be embarrassed. She was passionate about traveling and collecting art and had a story to tell you about every object in her house. She also cared deeply about museums and, for decades, she oversaw volunteer programs at institutions including the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the New York Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, the American Folk Art Museum and the Morgan Library and Museum.

She also loved Palisades and being on the river in Grand View but, most of all, she loved living in Snedens Landing. Its sense of community (our father suturing neighbors’ dogs—and neighbors—on our kitchen table), its traditions (the Normans’ Christmas party, trips to the waterfall, skating in the woods) and the friendships she made there both grounded and defined her. Until her mental and physical health declined sharply last summer, one of her greatest sources of joy was being in a book group that included friends she’d had since the late ‘60s and ‘70s—Alice Gerard, Marina Harrison, Cristina Biaggi, Jane Bernick, Oriel Eaton, Ellen Galinsky, Judy Englander, Marjorie Galen and more.

Our mother was born in 1935, in Selma, AL and raised in Cincinnati, OH. In the fall of 1953, during her orientation at Swarthmore College, she met and began dating another freshman, Conrad Lattes. They were married from 1958 until our father’s death in 1987.

After college, she received an MA in English Literature from Harvard University and she taught high school English while our father completed his medical training at Columbia University.

During the summer of 1967, our parents first came to Snedens Landing when they were invited to house–sit for a family who lived on Lawrence Lane. That fall, they bought a house on Washington Spring Road where we lived until 1974 when we moved to the house our parents built on Woods Road. Jain was born in 1976 and our mother lived on Woods Road until 2000, when she moved to Grand View with her husband, Norbert Swislocki, to whom she was married from 1991 until his death in 2020.

Our mother enjoyed being a trustee of the Village of Grand View-on-Hudson, where she also proudly served as the garbage commissioner. She was a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Association of Volunteer Administrators, the national board of the Transition Network, and the Swarthmore College Alumni Council.

She is survived by her four children: Lisa, Abby, Conrad, and Jain, and eleven grandchildren: Anabel, Eliza, Helen, and Angus Carter, Edwin and Emmett Hartlove, Emma, Sophie, and Ben Lattes, and Marina and Neko Thayer.