Obituary

Peggy Sapphire (née Margaret Lillian Sapphire)

January 25, 1939 – February 7, 2026

Our mom, Peggy, was a center of gravity. Family life gravitated around her, friends gravitated around her. She loved fiercely and befriended people with intensity. The long family conversations around the table that lasted for hours—starting, for us, Lori (Loren) and Jill, the daughters, in childhood at our grandparents' table—were rarely banal. Politics, art, writers, thinkers, those were the topics, changing over time to include grandchildren and in the last year an incredibly joy-inducing great-grandson.

Her own childhood was one that included numerous challenges, not the least of which had to do with the multiple moves the family made. While she was [inordinately] proud of being born in Brooklyn, she also lived in Binghamton, New York, Miami, Texas and San Jose, Costa Rica. That latter location in particular reflected the family's decision to self-exile as a result of our grandfather's having been blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. Our mom finished her high school education there and when she returned to the States, she was fully bilingual. Her accent may have deteriorated and errors slip in, yet throughout her life, she loved Spanish, loved opportunities to speak the language with others, to let words and phrases slip into her lexicon that she would draw on from everything, evident in her "SOMOS" licence plate to her con abrazos sign-offs.

When she married our father in early 1959, they lived in Storr, Connecticut, and eked by as our father pursued graduate studies. After having two daughters in fairly quick succession, she became a school teacher. We got to go to the schools where she worked—first at the National Laboratory in Stony Brook where they had a pre-school, and later at her very beloved Scraggy Hill Elementary School in Port Jefferson. Our family lived there from 1962-1972, but in those 10 short years, that place and its people held an incredibly important place in her life. Indeed, regardless of the other places she lived, they usually did not live up to the unchanging love she had for "Port Jeff" and one friendship from there in particular lasted from that time till the end of her life, with tremendous affection.

Years later, she met Robert Feinberg—Bob, Bobby—the love of her life. Their unabiding love for one another made those last almost 40 years together surely the best years of her life. By the time she and Bob were together, she had become a guidance counsellor, having earned her Master's in Counselling at Lehman College, and working with Special Needs children, first in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York and later in northern Westchester County, New York. She got to retire early and from that point on, she gave herself over to really exploring her creative interests that her life had not quite made room for till then. She became a photographer, entering, and even winning, numerous photography contests. The house in Craftsbury, Vermont is rather full with her photos, in fact, all framed by hand by Bob, thanks to his exquisite woodworking artistry.

Peggy was also a prolific writer. Having started journaling in the 1970s—ok, often by candlelight in her bed, with a glass of red wine on the bedside table—she wrote everything from letters to editor of the New York Times, among others (one notable handwritten letter we have was submitted in the year John F. Kennedy died), childrens' books, anthologies on storytelling, disenfranchised grief and, her greatest love, poetry. Our mother had work published in numerous anthologies in addition to the books published in her name. She loved giving readings, attending readings, and for a good number of years, she cherished her writing group with its small group of writers, encouraging and critiquing one another, providing the ultimate safe space for exploring voice…a most precious connection of women.

We cannot overstate what an important place poetry held in her life or how much it meant to her, whether from her time as editor of the Connecticut River Review or her time on the Board of Trustees of the Frost Place, or attending various writers retreats, writing, in general, and poetry, in particular, were essential sources and outlets for her creative needs and voice. She had many beloved poets whose writing she cherished. Peggy was a truly accomplished gardener, cook, seamstress, road warrior (having driven between Connecticut and Quebec dozens of times, especially to visit or lend a hand when the grandchildren were sick).

During her adult life, Mom heeded a call to activism of a variety of sorts, starting in the 60s when she would bring us to the food coop where she worked at times off the Nesconset Highway on Long Island, the League of Women Voters, various Women's Lib organizations. As time passed, she got involved in more directly political organizations, including, once she lived in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, the Vermont Progressive Party. She attended numerous marches in Washington, New York, Vermont and elsewhere for women's rights, Black Lives Matter, alternative energy concerns, among others. She was not always subtle in expressing her views, and when she supported a viewpoint, she was stalwart.

Peggy and Bob lived in Vermont for about 30 years. She loved to tell people how they lived in a beautiful octagonal house that Bob had designed and built—with help—in the mid-1990s. With a writing room and adjacent library, open spaces for long discussions and plenty of room outside for planting as much as she could, it was a fairly idyllic place to retire. My sister and I are sitting at that table now as we write this, and it's almost as though echoes of literally hundreds of family dinners resonate enough that no music is needed right now; the air is replete with memories.

This house that Bob built has been their refuge for decades and they rarely spent time away. They were happiest right here, together, reading history or memoirs in the sitting area, listening to music together while preparing some outstanding meal, she was genuinely blessed with setting down the kinds of roots that she just couldn't at earlier moments in her life.

She was, as said at the outset, a center of gravity. Their home was where family and friends came to gather over the years. There was always plenty of food or room for a couple more around the big table. We will miss her terribly, probably at odd moments, sometimes with laughter and surely with tears, but miss her deeply, we shall.

Peggy was preceded in death by her husband Bob, and survived by her beloved daughters Lori Sapphire Kelly and Jill Sapphire Goldberg, her grandchildren Rachelle Sapphire Laplante and Émile Laplante (Gabrielle Cloutier) and her great-grandson Colin. She also leaves her brother Ted Sapphire, whom she loved deeply and with whom she laughed like a teenager. The family also acknowledges her dear friend of over 70 years, Alice, as well as family in California, notably Bruce and Paula Feinberg, Sabina Feinberg and Clell Hoffman and her granddaughter Erica Feinberg (Chance NeeSmith).

Donations can be made to the National Parks Foundation or Doctors Without Borders. Online condolences are welcome at curtis-britch.com.