Bessie Hinchey, 96; dance teacher helped families to relocate in Salem

In her later years, Bessie Hinchey spent more time cultivating her artistic abilities. She enjoyed doing charcoal drawings and tapestries, with a particular fondness for drawing horses.

At her dance studio in Peabody, Elizabeth M. (Hickey) Hinchey taught students the ins and outs of tap dance, jazz, and swing, as live piano music helped set the mood. Her sister Mary taught elocution and drama while Elizabeth, known as Bessie, familiarized people with the steps that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers helped popularize.

After her third child was born, though, she hung up her dance shoes and shifted her attention to her brood - and to helping relocate families displaced by the City of Salem as it took property by eminent domain for historic preservation.

The former physical education teacher died of congestive heart failure Sept. 29 at her home in Salem. She was 96.

Mrs. Hinchey always had a knack for things athletic, relatives said. She met her husband, Dr. Paul Hinchey, through a friend, and invited him to visit her family's home in Nahant.

"She beat him in tennis, which provoked a lecture," said her son George of Newton. "Her mother said, 'Don't invite someone down as a guest and beat them,' and her quite simple response was 'Well, I am better than he is.' "

Her husband set up his private medical practice out of their old Georgian home, and she helped him with the initial legwork of opening for business, and was one of his first secretaries as his practice expanded.

The Peabody native earned her bachelor's degree in physical education from the Sargent College of Allied Health Professions just as it was merged with Boston University.

She taught physical education at a number of area high schools for a short time before joining her sister to teach drama and dance.

She taught until she was about seven or eight months pregnant, her family said.

"She was quite durable," said her son Peter of Danvers.

She made sure that her nine children were taught the basics.

"She spent a goodly amount of time in teaching us the setups and wanting us to be relaxed and yet alert," George said. "She wanted us to be not floppy and not just doing it in a casual way, but to think about dancing, to think about it as you would a sport, and that you have to have your mind and your body involved."

"She was actually quite a patient teacher," her son said.

Her husband died after about 30 years of marriage, and she went back to work.

For a time, she was director of volunteers at Salem Hospital, where her husband had worked as a surgeon. She helped run the gift shop and coordinated schedules.

Widowed with children still living at home, "she was quite effective at money management, and was able to continue on with life uninterrupted," George said.

She became a relocation officer for Salem in the late 1960s, when the city was undergoing redevelopment. Told that it was a man's job, she was quite firm in insisting that there was nothing in the job description that demanded the hiring of a man for the post.

She steered families toward new homes when their properties were taken over, helped distribute grant money, and helped people sort out the bureaucratic aspects of relocation. She retired in 1978.

In her later years, Mrs. Hinchey spent much more time cultivating her artistic abilities. She enjoyed doing charcoal drawings and tapestries, with a particular fondness for drawing horses.

"She always had a project going and was more comfortable with a lot of action and confusion going on," said her son Charles of Salem.

She helped organize sing-alongs at Salem elder affairs functions and she enjoyed wearing stylish hats, her family said.

"Conversationally, having had a very theatrical sister, who was very dramatically prone in public, she was much quieter, very easy to talk with one-on-one, much more observational in a group setting, and not out to be competitive," Peter said.

In addition to Peter, George, and Charles, Mrs. Hinchey leaves four other sons, Richard of Bluebell, Pa., Paul of Annapolis, Md., John of Swampscott, and Chris of Salem; a daughter, Mary Clemens of Oxon Hill, Md.; eight grandsons; six granddaughters; and a great-grandson.

Services were held. Burial was at St. Mary's Cemetery in Salem.