Shirley Irene Griffith Hibbard

Shirley Irene Hibbard, nee Griffith, died peacefully at The Heron House in Cumberland Foreside, Maine on the evening of November 3, 2024. Shirley was born in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, on Guy Faulks Day, November 5, 1926, with a suitcase in her hand…or so her later love of travel made it seem. Shirley's father, Ewart, owned a factory and a farm. He loved to fly planes and ride horses. Her mother, Dorothy, was a multi-media artist and great baker known for her pies. Shirley was the middle child of three girls: Marion, Shirley, and Gwenna. As a young girl, Shirley loved badminton and ice skating. She was an accomplished seamstress and enjoyed it. She was a good student and the only one in her family to leave the area for college. She majored in Art History, which is how she met her future husband, Howard Hibbard, at the University of Wisconsin, where they both got their MAs. They married in 1951 and then moved to Boston and Harvard University, followed by New York and Columbia University. Howard’s field was 16th and 17th-century Italian painting and sculpture, which led them to travel to Italy often. Their first child, Claire, was born in Rome in 1957. For the next three decades, they traveled back and forth between New York City and Rome, Italy, where they had an apartment that overlooked the Tiber and the Roman hill towns. They had two more daughters, Susan (1959), and Carla (1964). Shirley had several jobs (at museums and teaching art history). Still, she spent most of her time raising her girls, gardening, sewing their clothes, knitting sweaters, excelling at every creative endeavor she tried, and helping Howard research, write, and type (repeatedly) many scholarly and a few popular art history books. Their work entailed lots of trips to towns all over Italy, great meals in small restaurants, viewing churches as museums, and enjoying life. Neither had tried garlic or tasted spicy foods before they met each other, but they dove into learning about food, cooking, and eating. The family of five watched Julia Child introduce the art of French cooking to the US from a king-sized bed and hung on her every word. Both Shirley and Howard loved to plan, prepare for, and host dinner parties and graduate student parties. They loved music and dancing—the Beatles, Mamas and Papas, the Supremes, Johnny Cash, Dionne Warwick, and The Beach Boys. But they also loved Opera and classical music, Mozart, Bach, Rachmaninov… One of their favorite games was to play a piece of music and have the other one name the composer. Howard got cancer and after a lengthy illness, died in 1984. Shirley bought and renovated an apartment at the Hotel des Artistes and moved back into Manhattan from the suburbs. She decided to go back to school to become an historic preservationist, which had become her passion. After completing the program at Columbia University, she worked on historic structure reports on several historically significant and beautiful buildings. In 1997, Shirley wrote Rock Hall: A Narrative History for the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities and in 2000, she co-authored Joseph Lloyd Manor House Interpreter Manual, Resource for Interpreter Orientation, Development and Enrichment. When Susan and her wife Mary adopted their second son Miles, Shirley declared she wanted to be the one to feed him oatmeal in the mornings. She sold her farmhouse in Kingston, NY and moved to Maine to be closer to the only baby in the family. She bought and renovated a Victorian house in Portland, loved spending time with Max and Miles, and worked as a docent at the Tate House. She was lucky to have moved into a foodie neighborhood by Rosemont Bakery where the neighbors often had progressive dinner parties eating their way down the street. She also made fresh bread and banana bread for her family and neighbors constantly. Shirley is survived by her three daughters: Dr. Claire Alexandra Hibbard and her husband, Thomas S. Leyh; Susan Giulia Hibbard and her wife, Mary M. Dorazio; and Carla Costanza Hibbard; her six grandchildren: Lilly Elizabeth Leyh, Zoe Francesca Leyh, Maxwell James Dorazio Hibbard, Miles Henry Dorazio Hibbard, Griffith Hibbard-Curto Gray and his wife, Hannah Murphy Gray, and Luca Benjamin Hibbard-Curto and her two great-grandchildren, Eloise and Isabelle Leyh-Pierce. Shirley is also survived by her younger sister, Gwenna. The family will hold a private celebration of Shirley’s life.

Shirley Irene Griffith Hibbard

November 5, 1926 - November 3, 2024

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