Beverly Baird Wood
Beverly Baird Wood died peacefully on October 11, 2021 in Bloomfield, CT. Born in Chicago, IL on February 11, 1928, Beverly Maxwell Baird was the younger child of Frederick Baird, an executive for the New York Central Railroad, and Ruth Llewellyn Baird, an accomplished painter.
Beverly attended Rosemary Hall School and upon graduation from Smith College in 1949 she travelled to Europe where she met her future husband, Robert Wood, during a chance encounter in Venice. They married in 1950, and lived in New Jersey before settling in St. James, NY where Bev raised four children and helped to found Harbor Country Day School, which is thriving to this day.
In 1970, the family moved to Stowe, VT to fulfill Bob’s dream of running a country hardware store. As a member of the League of Women Voters, Beverly worked to pass the state’s first zoning laws which helped preserve Stowe’s cherished small-town character. Later, she again defeated the forces of over-commercialization when she led the effort to save the historic Stowe High School from demolition. Beverly then rallied support to convert the building into a regional art center and public library which thrived for decades under her watchful eye.
An avid skier, gardener, and town meeting debater, Beverly made Stowe her primary home for 37 years. Her true home, however, was located 200 miles to the west on an island in Chippewa Bay, NY, in the Thousand Islands, where she presided over her expanding, rambunctious family and the inner workings of the Chippewa Yacht Club through her 94th summer.
With a strong will, a keen mind, and a loving heart, she planned, negotiated, coaxed, and occasionally pushed for the things that mattered to her: her family, education, arts, self-determination. Preferring to work behind the scenes, she was a quiet force of nature, implacable in her resolve, motivated by goodness, and usually right.
Beverly is survived by her four children: Sandra Wood Forand and husband Bernie Forand, of Hartford, CT; Richard Wood and wife Marianne Wood of Pottstown, PA; Susan Wood and husband David Duff, of Macomb, NY; and Stuart Wood of Charlottesville, VA. Also mourning the loss of their Granny are her eight grandchildren, their four partners, and eight (soon to be nine) great-grandchildren.
There will be a memorial by Zoom on December 12 at 4 pm. Please contact BBWmemorial@gmail.com to obtain the link if you’d like to participate. Beverly requested that any memorial contributions go to the Thousand Islands Land Trust, PO Box 238, Clayton, NY 13624 – www.TILandTrust.org.