Katharine Elena Doolittle Coon, a traveler known for her spontaneity, 81

By Martha Bartle, Globe Correspondent, 9/28/2003

Katharine Elena Doolittle Coon of Marshfield, a multilingual woman known for her spontaneity and love of travel, died Sept. 18 of ovarian cancer at Jordan Hospital in Plymouth. She was 81.

Mrs. Coon spoke Russian, Spanish, and French, as well as English. A few days before her death, she asked her daughter for an English-Russian dictionary because she couldn't remember the Russian word for dimple.

Mrs. Coon, who was known as Katya to family and friends, was born in Madras, India, the daughter of Hooker A. Doolittle, a vice consul in the US Foreign Service. She attended St. George's boarding school in Switzerland and traveled to France, Spain, Canada, and Tangier, Morocco, with her parents.

"She wasn't someone that came in and dominated the room," said her daughter, Elena Prentice of Tangier. "She was quiet and unassuming, read a lot, and squirreled away little bits of knowledge."

Mrs. Coon came to the United States in 1939 to live with her cousins in upstate New York, where she worked at a bed-and-breakfast. During her freshman year at George Washington University in Washington, she met Maurice Coon, the son of family friends, whom she married in 1941.

The couple soon moved to Washington Avenue in Cambridge, where their three children were born and raised.

As a mother, Mrs. Coon instilled the same open-minded tolerance that her upbringing chiseled into her personality and she encouraged her children to read voraciously or paint, as opposed to taking tennis or dancing classes, Prentice said. The family summered at a house in Marshfield built with yellow pine timbers from a wrecked ship. They moved into the house in 1968 as permanent residents. Mr. Coon died in 1980.

"The house is full of eclectic personal items," Prentice said, referring to a collection of miniature elephants, jars of little tools and ribbons, and the porch that her mother converted into a "jungle room," complete with parrots, monkeys, and tropical rain forest wallpaper on the ceiling. In later years, Mrs. Coon would invite neighborhood children for sleepovers in the jungle room.

"She was the most loving person you'd want to know and full of energy, as far as giving back to the community," said her son, Seth of Marshfield.

Mrs. Coon volunteered at the Council on Aging, where she served lunches to the elderly. Every two weeks she would read the Spanish newspaper El Mundo on the radio at the Talking Information Center in Marshfield.

Everyone in Marshfield knew her, said Kate Driscoll Coon, her daughter-in-law. "A five-minute trip to the post office would turn into two times five conversations."

Throughout her life, Mrs. Coon traveled as often as possible, taking her grandchildren to London and Cuba and visiting her daughter in Tangier, where her parents are buried.

She woke every morning with the sunrise, exercised to her Denise Austin video, doing leg kicks at the age of 81, and worked diligently in her garden.

As an active member of the Audubon Society in Marshfield, she enjoyed bird-watching and taking long walks on the beach, on which she often picked up palm-size rocks that she arranged in a 7-foot circle in front of her house, her son said.

In addition to her son and daughter, Mrs. Coon leaves another daughter, Keilah of Scituate; a sister, Natasha Van Deusen of Greensboro, N.C.; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

No funeral services are planned at this time.