Elizabeth Driscoll, Gobe writer and TV critic, dedicated teacher; at 91
[By Gloria Negri /Globe Staff / June 21, 2010 ]
Elizabeth Driscoll came from a newspaper family. Her father was a court reporter for the old Boston Herald. Her two sisters worked for The Boston Globe.
Over two decades, she also worked for the Globe, covering all kinds of stories, writing a column for teenagers in the 1940s, and interviewing wives of politicians and Red Sox players.
At the Globe, she met Edgar J. Driscoll Jr., then its art critic. He was attracted “not only by her beauty but by her wit, charm and intelligence. Liz was a very warm and giving person,’’ he said. “She was a raconteur. She had strong opinions and was strong-minded. She understood people so well.’’ They married in 1955.
Soon after, said their daughter, Abigail D. Lee of Potsdam, N.Y., “under a Globe policy that husbands and wives could not both work at the paper, mother left to start a family.’’
Mrs. Driscoll, who passed on her love for words and reading as a teacher of young people with reading disabilities, died of heart failure May 31 at Massachusetts General Hospital, after a two-year struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 91.
During the 55 years of their marriage, the Driscolls lived on Beacon Hill, where they were considered both community treasures and pillars. Their Thanksgiving dinners usually with 60 or 70 guests, are legendary. Most Beacon Hill gatherings were incomplete without them.
“Mother had a Yankee spirit that didn’t like wastefulness, and she was rarely idle, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know how to relax and enjoy life,’’ her daughter said.
In just a few of Mrs. Driscoll’s volunteer roles in Boston, she helped preserve historic landmarks, including the Rose Nichols House on the Hill, and increased the number of volunteers at the Boston Athenaeum, one of the world’s oldest private libraries.
Her afternoon teas there were memorable. They often included recipes from “Tea with Miss Rose: Recipes and Reminiscences of Boston’s Teacup Society’’ that she wrote with Elaine Negroponte of Beacon Hill.
Rose Nichols was among the first well-known women landscape architects. When she died in 1964, she left her Beacon Hill home to the public and, now a museum, it is on the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. Mrs. Driscoll served on the first board of the Nichols House Museum. Ms. Nichols’ cook, Mary King, “gave Liz her recipes,’’ which are in the book, Negroponte said.
The recipe for broccoli tea sandwiches is very popular at Atheneaum teas, said Monica Higgins of Cambridge, its director of events. “Liz was the gold standard.’’
Though not on staff, Mrs. Driscoll stayed connected to the Globe as its television critic in the 1950s. Connaught Mahony, a longtime Beacon Hill friend, remembered that the Globe sent a TV to the Driscoll home, and “We all went over to watch and Liz wrote a column, ‘TV Notebook,’ for the next day.’’ She also wrote witty columns for the Beacon Hill News.
Closer to Mrs. Driscoll’s heart was the need to help young people with language-based learning problems, such as dyslexia. She knew she could help change their lives, her family said, and she did for many.
In the mid-1960s, she enrolled in the language program at Massachusetts General Hospital where Dr. Edwin Cole taught the Orton Gillingham Method to fight the problem.
Dr. Cole founded the Carroll School in Lincoln, where Mrs. Driscoll taught from 1967 to 1973. “Mom loved helping children unlock the puzzle of words and experience the joy of reading. She thrilled in their sense of achievement,’’ Abigail said.
From 1973 to 1990, she taught in the language disabilities program at Dexter School in Brookline. “She was passionate about what she was doing and patient and dedicated to those children,’’ said William Phinney, Dexter headmaster. He made her head of the language program in 1978.
Henry Lee, a Beacon Hill friend who served on the Dexter School board, said many of her students “were able to be mainstreamed into the general student body because of Liz.’’
Mahony, also a board member at Dexter, said of Mrs. Driscoll’s teaching: “It was as though Liz were the sun and the little boys, the flowers.’’
John Finley, founder and head of the Epiphany School in Dorchester, a tuition-free independent school for economically disadvantage youngsters who have been neglected, was one of her Dexter students.
“I arrived there basically not able to read, bluffing my way through,’’ he said. “Mrs. Driscoll was incredibly accepting. When you found something that interested you — I was interested in Indonesia — she made it a class project. There was an ebullient, loving sense about her. She made our classroom work full of joy.’’
After Dexter, Finley graduated from Harvard College. He left its divinity school to found Epiphany in 1993. “I very much want to create the same culture at my school as Mrs. Driscoll created in her classroom,’’ he said.
Elizabeth Ware Watts was born in Newton and grew up in Milton. Her father, Albert Watts, was a court reporter and wrote a poetry column for the Herald.
She graduated from Milton High School in 1936 and attended Calvin Coolidge College in Boston in 1936 and 1937. In 1937 and 1938, she attended Stuart School, a finishing school in the Back Bay and Harvard summer classes. In 1939, she studied at Newnham College at England’s Cambridge University.
Later, she started working at the Globe, where her sister, the late Marjorie Watts Sherman, was society editor, and another sister, the late Phyllis Coons, was education writer.
“Mother was the center of gravity for so many people,’’ another daughter, Elizabeth D. Conklin of Chester Springs, Pa., said. “She reached out to a confused adolescent as easily as a scholar struggling with anorexia. Mom helped people in an understated way.’’
She never lost her sense of humor, her family said. A baseball fan, she loved ending an evening with “Good luck to you and the Red Sox.’’
In addition to her husband and two daughters, Mrs. Driscoll leaves a son, Edgar J. Driscoll III of Boston, and four grandchildren.
Services will be held at King’s Chapel in Boston at a date to be announced.