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PHOEBE CHAPMAN |
Phoebe Chapman, 92, icon of arboretum, pillar of neighborhood
For regular visitors to the Arnold Arboretum, entering its wondrous botanical world via Arborough Road in Roslindale has been a must for more than six decades because of Phoebe Chapman.
She lived in a home evocative of an English cottage at the dead-end of the road abutting the arboretum and was most often outside, tending her garden or sitting on her porch. If Mrs. Chapman was not outside, they might have heard her playing piano, and, if lucky, they would receive an invitation to come in for cocoa, cookies, and conversation.
Over the years, strangers became friends; and Phoebe Chapman had many. "We had to caution Phoebe not to invite just everyone into her home," said Joan Matulis, a longtime neighbor, over concern for her safety. That never entered Mrs. Chapman's mind.
Her grandson, Richard Brandariz, of Portsmouth, R.I., described her as "quite an icon of the arboretum" and recalled how she would show him off as a child to passersby. "My grandmother's life revolved around the neighborhood," he said. "She launched a neighborhood watch - she had her own whistle - and touched many lives."
She was a strong woman, physically and willfully. "She was not very much over 5 feet, not skinny, a very healthy woman with great muscle strength and dark hair," Brandariz said. He sometimes called her, "Big Mama."
Mrs. Chapman, who with her husband, Richard, were pillars of the Roslindale community, died Feb. 8 at Newport Hospital in Newport, R.I. She was 92.
Her daughter, Elaine Williams of Newport, said the cause of death was heart failure.
A minister's daughter, Mrs. Chapman had lived in Roslindale since she was 1.
"Phoebe Chapman was the matriarch of Arborough Road," said former neighbor Stanley J. Forman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and a photojournalist for WCVB-TV. "She came from a simpler time, never had a car, never drove a car and, yet, she and her husband did everything there was to do with their daughter. Phoebe wasn't nosy, but she knew everything about everything and everybody. She appreciated what she had and never longed for more.
"She was the local nurse, doctor, psychiatrist. When you talked with her, she listened and soothed. She did have one vice, though. She liked reading the grocery store tabloids."
Her good works were legendary. "I've seen Phoebe take hungry and homeless people and give them food. But she never did anything with condescension," said Michael King, of Weston, a former neighbor. "Phoebe and Richard were like the perfect couple. They both liked doing good, and Phoebe, to her dying day, if she had only $20 she would give it to someone who needed it. They had little money, but they were abundantly blessed with the ability to do good without being do-gooders."
Many described the Chapmans as a match made in heaven. Richard Chapman, a descendant of New England Yankee stock, was branch manager of
When Mr. Chapman's first wife became ill, Phoebe Tokas was sent in one day to fill in for another nurse's aide. He and Phoebe would meet casually after his wife's death in 1940. Young Phoebe came to know him as a kind and somewhat shy man, 30 years her senior. After a while, Williams said, it got to the point where "Mother had to propose that they marry."
They wed in 1943 and had a blissful 41 years together until his death at 97 in 1984. Williams said that while her elders urged her mother "to find a nice, Greek boy to marry, she did not want to be told whom to wed."
Phoebe Lydia Tokas was born in Everett to the Rev. Christie G. and Grace Tokas. The elder sister of two brothers, she moved with her family to Roslindale because of the reverend's ministry. During the Great Depression, when Phoebe was 12, she was responsible for caring for her brothers while their mother assisted their father in his church ministry and helped immigrants find homes.
Her father taught Phoebe to play piano when she was 8, so she could assist him at his services. She later did that for 25 years on Sunday afternoons when he conducted his Greek Protestant services at the Park Street Church in Boston, taking public transportation from Roslindale. The family never had a car, Williams said.
Mrs. Chapman could play any kind of music, church, classical, and popular. When she volunteered to play at veterans' hospitals, King said, she'd often start off with a rousing rendition of "Beer Barrel Polka."
She continued playing the piano until two years ago, her grandson said, when she moved from her home to the Sophia Snow House, an assisted living facility in West Roxbury where she was known as "The Ambassador."
Earlier in life, Mrs. Chapman had dreams of going to college and becoming a social worker, her daughter said. But, because she wanted to help her family during the Depression, she held a variety of jobs before marriage that included a telemarketer selling cemetery plots, working in a pastry shop, and being a nanny.
She was happier, however, as a volunteer with the International Institute in Boston, helping immigrants and refugees assimilate to life in New England. While at the institute, she was offered a scholarship to Simmons College, her daughter said, but turned that down to work and help her family. In the late 1960s, Mrs. Chapman worked part time in the herbarium of the arboretum, which she loved.
In Roslindale, the Chapmans were a kind of first family. "Richard and Phoebe always considered themselves ambassadors of goodwill," neighbor Richard Matulis wrote in a publication of Roslindale's Sacred Heart Church in 1997. They started what became a traditional Fourth of July neighborhood picnic.
To neighbor Karen Weber, Phoebe Chapman was "both sister and mother. 'Phoebe-bird,' " she said was the proverbial "shoulder to cry on." She was the idol of neighborhood children. She never lost the sparkle in her eyes, Weber said, and even into her 90s, had suitors.
Last year, the Roslindale Transcript, in a story about long-married couples renewing their vows, quoted Mrs. Chapman saying, "I'm not interested in any other man. I tell would be suitors, 'Thank you, but I'm still in love with my husband.' "
In addition to her daughter and grandson, Mrs. Chapman leaves another grandson and two great-grandsons.
A celebration of her life will be held at 2 p.m. March 7 in Roslindale Congregational Church.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
