Ann Jewell Kingsbury Resch

Ann Jewell Kingsbury Resch, a longtime resident of Shaftsbury, recently of Bennington, died July 16 at SVMC of complications of a stroke. She was born in Boston on Sept. 27, 1930, to Felicia Doughty and Frederick S. Kingsbury, who were both architects. She received her early education at the Thomas School in Rowayton, Conn., founded by her great aunt, Mabel Thomas. She graduated from Brown University and during three years in London received a licentiate from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. During a career in theater, Ann was for four years the assistant to Joseph Papp, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival. In early days she was an assistant stage manager and business manager of Group Twenty Players in Wellesley, Mass., and other regional theaters including the Antioch Shakespeare Festival and Brattle Street Theater, working closely with actors including Jerry Kilty and Rosemary Harris. For ten years she lived in Manhattan, where besides her association with Joseph Papp she worked as a play reader for Lynn Austin and Roger Stevens. In June 1966 she and Tyler Resch were married in Rowayton and they became parents of daughters Catharine and Elizabeth. After leaving Manhattan, Ann taught voice at the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y., and at Bennington College, where she later served as coordinator of the dance-drama division. She helped to organize the Vermont Symphony’s youth concerts in Bennington and was active with the Beyond War movement of the 1980s. Many of her reviews of regional drama productions were published locally. Her parents divorced when she was three, so she barely knew her father. Her lifelong friend, Eve Harlan, was the daughter of Supreme Court Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan II, who considered Ann his “second daughter.” Though raised in Connecticut, Ann had a strong Vermont lineage. Her Revolutionary War ancestor, Benjamin Jewell, was among early settlers of Whitingham, where parts of the Jewell homestead remain today. During World War Two Ann spent summers with her mother and sisters there in a cabin their mother converted from a sugarhouse. Ann read and re-read the works of Shakespeare there on top of a large boulder known thereafter as “the Shakespeare rock.” A good swimmer, she often enjoyed the waters of Lake Paran and the Harriman Reservoir. She loved cats and always kept one or two except for her years in London. Survivors besides her husband are a sister, Ellen K. Viereck of Shaftsbury; daughters Catharine, now of Savannah, Ga., and Elizabeth, now of Lynn, Mass.; her son-in-law Steven Petersen; and several nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by a sister, Jocelyn K. Moreland. The family is grateful for the excellent care Ann received during the past two years in the Clare Bridge unit at Brookdale Fillmore Pond.