Katherine Lynn Darlington
April 30, 1943 ~ August 26, 2024
Resided in:
Freedom, New Hampshire
April 30, 1943 - August 26, 2024
Katherine Lynn Darlington, a longtime resident of Freedom, NH, passed away on the morning of August 26, 2024. She was an adoring and beloved grandmother, mother, mother-in-law, sister, and friend.
Kate, the second eldest of Veronica Helen and John Edward Darlington’s four children, was born and raised in New Jersey. In her childhood years, she loved spending time at the Jersey Shore and riding the train into Manhattan with her siblings to meet their Uncle Joey for lunch at the automat and a movie.
After graduating from Chestnut Hill Nursing School in Philadelphia, she married in 1967. Robin and David, the first two of her three children, were born there. They moved to Jackson, NH, in 1971. She delivered her third child, Susannah, at Memorial Hospital in North Conway. The family moved in 1977 to the village of Freedom, where Kate resided the remainder of her life.
Kate had a deep and abiding faith and was a dedicated member of Our Lady of the Mountains parish.
In her early days in New Hampshire, Kate held a series of jobs at organizations she loved including the Fryeburg Fair, High Meadow Farm, and Camp Nellie Huckins. As a child, she had struggled to learn to read. However, once she conquered the challenge, books became her passion. She earned her library techniques certification at the New Hampshire State Library and was a reference librarian at Conway Public Library in Conway, NH, for more than 20 years. She adored her library colleagues and felt every single patron was important, showing her affection by scouring the country through the national interlibrary loan database for all manner of materials. At the library, she felt most accomplished, confident, joyful, and of service.
Kate loved the arts and spent much of her free time enjoying music, fine art, movies, and theater with friends and family. Gifted with a beautiful voice, Kate was a member of the Mount Washington Valley Choral Society for many years. She had an incredible touch with plants and dogs. She often reminisced about the great canine loves of her life – collies all: Lassie, to whom she told all her troubles when she was a girl, Harriet, her ferocious and dedicated best friend through early motherhood, and Annie, Freedom’s celebrity border collie ball player in the 1980s.
Kate loved Freedom Village. She was a regular participant in Freedom Friends Club and Freedom Beach Club and hosted countless Freedom Old Home Week parade watch parties on her front porch. She welcomed all of her friends, including the Read and Bloomquist families, to this annual summer gathering.
Kate is survived by three children and their spouses: Robin and Alan Lapoint, David and Amy Cranage, and Anna and Michael Conathan; five grandchildren: Matthew, Nathaniel, and Christina Lapoint, Emma Cranage, and Alexis Conathan; two sisters, Barbara Brinkman and Rosemary MacDonald; Rosemary’s husband Craig; and several nieces and nephews whom she loved dearly. She was predeceased by her parents, her brother John Edward Darlington, Jr., and her brother-in-law, John Harold Brinkman.
She will be remembered for her infinite patience, her golden and graceful heart, and her sly quiet wit. We will not forget her. We have written her name on the palms of our hands in her beautiful cursive script.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 11am on Friday, September 6, 2024 in the chapel at Camp Marist, 22 Abel Blvd., Effingham, New Hampshire; followed by a reception at Freedom Town Hall, 33 Old Portland Rd.
In lieu of flowers, Kate’s family asks for donations to Believe in Books, a local literacy charity in Intervale, NH, and Maȟpíya Lúta (formerly Red Cloud Indian School).
https://www.believeinbooks.org/
https://mahpiyaluta.org/
View current weather.
Memories Timeline
Guestbook
Sign the Guestbook, Light a Candle
I light this candle in memory of Kate who was such a kind, beautiful and loving person to everyone she met. May the light she shined on all of us remain within each of us. You will always be in our hearts. Peace. Aurelie