Mary French Mathes “Math” Jackson, 97, of Vero Beach, passed away at her summer residence in York Harbor, Maine, on April 7, 2016.
She is survived by her three children, Richard S. Jackson, Jr. (Linda), Mary French Jackson and her daughter Elizabeth Werbe, James Mathes Jackson (Valerie) and their four children, Lucas Jackson (Victoria), Benjamin Jackson (Lauren), Sara Jackson Chaplin (John Chaplin), and Katie Jackson; and three great-grandchildren, Audrey, Jameson, and Walker Jackson.
She was preceded in death by her husband; her brother James M. Mathes, Jr., killed in World War II; and by two younger sisters, Harriet Mathes Rohde, and Ruth Mathes Gerrity.
While living in Greenwich, Conn., Louisville, Kent., Pittsfield, Mass., York Harbor, Maine and Vero Beach, Jackson was very active in volunteer work. She held many offices in local garden clubs. She also served the Garden Club of America as assistant chairman of the Finance Committee and as a member of several other national committees.
For several years, she was the board chairman of the Berkshire County Home for Aged Women. She was a nurse’s aide in Hartford, Conn., in the early 1940s. In addition to her love of the game of bridge, Jackson was an active sportswoman, a skier and golfer, who played tennis up to the age of 90.
Her clubs included the Round Hill and Belle Haven clubs of Greenwich, the Country Club of Pittsfield and the Lenox Club, the York Harbor Reading Room, York Golf and Tennis and Agamenticus Yacht clubs.
Born in 1918 in Boston, Mass., to James Monroe Mathes and Ruth Dearborn Mathes, Jackson spent her early school years at the Buckley School in Great Neck, N.Y. She graduated from the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Conn., in 1936 and from Vassar College in 1940.
She married her husband, the late Richard S. Jackson, a Dartmouth graduate of 1939, on Sept. 14, 1940 at Christ Church in Greenwich, Conn. They enjoyed 63 years of married life until his death in 2003.
Funeral and burial services will be private. In lieu of flowers, donations in Mrs. Jackson’s memory may be made to Trinity Church, P.O. Box 323, York Harbor, ME 03911 or to Dartmouth College, The Richard S. Jackson ’39 and Mary M. Jackson Scholarship Fund, 6066 Development Offices, Hanover, NH.
