Patricia Lovejoy Stoddard died peacefully in her sleep at home on September 10, at the age of 91. A New Canaan resident since 1956, she was married to Hudson G. Stoddard for 63 years, until his death in 2017.
Born in Detroit, Michigan on December 2, 1930, Pat was the second of four children of Elijah Parish Lovejoy III and Jane Howell Lovejoy and is survived by a sister, Gail Neale, of Middlebury, VT. She was predeceased by her sister Cynthia Underhill Robinson and her brother, Elijah Parish Lovejoy IV. She graduated from the Liggett School in Detroit in 1948 and went on to receive a B.A. in English from Cornell University in 1952. She moved to New York after graduation and became an editorial researcher at Time Inc. While there, she met her future husband, who was a special assistant to Publisher Henry Luce. Following their marriage, Pat taught briefly at the Dalton School before moving to Connecticut in 1956. In 1968, she earned her MS in Education at Western Connecticut State College and worked at New Canaan Country School for the next decade. She taught 7th and 8th grade English, History, and Anthropology and served as Academic Dean. One of the great joys of Pat’s life was seeing her former students grow up, and hearing from them that those classroom years together had made some small difference in their lives. Pat went on to work in the corporate sector, as Assistant to the Chairman of Champion International Corporation (now International Paper) in Stamford, CT — and in that capacity served as speechwriter and oversaw employee and shareholder communications.
