| Notes |
- From FindaGrave:
Daughter of Henry Herman Woodward (1895-?) and Ella Angelique Knox (1896-?). "Trudy" was a stay-at-home mom who bore the duties of both parents when her husband, Ike, was in Antarctica with the Navy for two years. Ike and Trudy divorced in 1972, partly due to the strain of Ike's return from the Navy to a home run by his wife and full of children with whom he'd lost touch. Their children were, Alex (1947– 1993), James (1948-), Kate (1949-), Livingston (1950-) and Hugh (1952-).
Gertrude was the daughter of a Massachusetts fisherman and the wife of a North Carolina doctor. She devoted her life to her marriage and her five children, four boys and a girl, all born in the span of six years between 1947 and 1953.
She raised us in the home she built in Chapel Hill, NC and, since she never lost her Maritime New England roots, made an annual summer migration to Martha's Vineyard Island. Her two homes, in Chapel Hill and Chilmark, were works of art into which she channeled her constant creativity. But she was also an accomplished painter, a weaver (spinning her own yarn), a photographer, a distinguished horticulturist and a killer cook, whose talents in the kitchen were celebrated by anyone fortunate enough to sit at her table. This included the illustrious James Beard who introduced the world to her "Chilmark Bouillabaisse." Everything she put her hand to became a work of art.
As the wife of the Dean of Medicine at the Universary of North Carolina, she shouldered the burden of official hostess with a warmth and sophistication that was an invaluable asset to my father, as he built a world-renowned School of Medicine and assembled its faculty. She ended her days in her simple, elegant cottage overlooking her beloved Stonewall Pond, surrounded by dear friends and four generations of family. As she liked to say: "Life is finite, but love lasts forever..." ~ James Taylor
Obituary in the Vineyard Gazette of Oct. 11, 2015:
Trudy Taylor, the widely-admired matriarch of the musical Taylor family, died Saturday at her home overlooking Stonewall Beach in Chilmark, surrounded by family and friends. She was one month shy of her 93rd birthday. The cause was complications of old age, her daughter Kate Taylor said.
At once petite and sturdy, elegant and outspoken, Trudy had endless curiosity in people and the world around her, especially the natural world. She was a master gardener who earned state recognition for her sustainable seaside gardens that surrounded her modest home.
Living by the sea came naturally to her; she grew up in Newburyport, the daughter of a commercial fisherman. "My people were all fishermen, real fishermen," she told the Gazette an interview last year. "We're Vikings, on my father's side." She had lived on the Vineyard year round since the 1970s, but began coming before that with her late husband Dr. Isaac Taylor.
"We discovered the Vineyard through the Massachusetts General Hospital," she recalled in the Gazette interview. "My husband was the dean of the medical school there. The people who ran the Tashmoo Farm were from Mass General and they talked us into coming here." Isaac Taylor died in 1995. In her long life Trudy had many passions and had traveled the world. But the Vineyard was the place she always called home. She brought plant cuttings from faraway places and with her green thumb nurtured them into lush everlasting beauties. Camellias, dwarf geraniums, Myer lemons and a fig tree all thrived alongside frogs, lizards and canaries in her dirt-floor greenhouse built from a kit. "They're my survival," she said in a 2009 interview with the Martha's Vineyard Magazine. "Winters are bleak here."
She is survived by her three sons, James, Livingston and Hugh Taylor; her daughter Kate Taylor; nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. In addition to Isaac Taylor, she was predeceased by her oldest son Alex Taylor.
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1922 - 2015 (92 years)
