Lydia Ruth Radcliffe Peck

Lydia Ruth Radcliffe Peck, age 98, of Inverness, Florida, passed away on Sunday, January 20th, 2019, after only a few initial hours in hospice care (immediately following nearly a week in the hospital.) Having remained — by emphatic choice! — in her own home until only days before her death, she was found by her longtime friend who checked on her daily, and who summoned help. Lydia is survived by her only child, Amy Peck Murphy, of St. Marys, Georgia. Born in Binghamton, New York, on October 21st, 1920, to Judson Pierson Radcliffe and Ruth Mooar Radcliffe (both of whom were deaf), she was raised in Freeport, Long Island, graduating from high school there in 1939. During the intial years following graduation, Lydia found work at various clerical positions in the New York City area (Chase Bank, Sperry Gyroscope, and at Jamaica Hospital.) As World War II raged, she made the decision to become an R.N., with the initial thought of going into the military to care for the wounded. After some time working three jobs in order to afford the upcoming tuition, she was accepted into an intensive, three-year, live-in program at St. John’s School of Nursing, Brooklyn, graduating in the class of 1947. During her last summer in St. John’s, she met the man who would remain the love of her life, Dr. Walter Edwin Peck, a noted Shelley biographer and university professor of English; they were married January 15th, 1948, in a civil ceremony. In June of 1949, they welcomed a daughter, Amy Ruth. Walter passed away, suddenly, on January 10th, 1954, at age 62; Lydia remained a widow all the subsequent years until her death. During the early, difficult years following her husband’s passing, she was quick to realize that the most sensible nursing career for a single mother would be school nursing, but in order to qualify, a Bachelor’s degree was needed. She enrolled in NYU, thus beginning a ten-year regimen of nights/weekends classes to achieve it, while working full-time. (Fortunately, her devoted mother lived with her, and was a warm and loving grandmother to Amy through most of her childhood years. Eventually, after cognitive decline required transfer to a nursing home, Ruth passed on at age eighty.) In 1953, Lydia managed to afford her very first home: a small house, directly on a deep-water canal, in Blue Point, Long Island — an achievement which, along with her nursing degree, remained her proudest. (As a child in Freeport, she had always ached to live “right on the canal”; her own home was merely tantalizingly close!) She enjoyed many of her happiest years in Blue Point, boating on beautiful Great South Bay, in an assortment (over the years) of canoes, powerboats, and finally a “Skimmar” sailboat, which became her lifetime favorite. After retiring from school nursing, Lydia sold that home and moved down to Inverness Highlands, in 1979, where she continued to work until age seventy, first at Leesburg General Hospital and later for an insurance firm, administering qualifying physicals for life insurance applicants. Family and friends who knew Lydia best recognized, and remember, her “New Yawk sensayuma,” which carried her through so many challenges over the years. She could recite nearly every line from the (“Classic 39”) “Honeymooners” episodes, and always declared that laughter was “her friend.” According to her wishes, there is to be no funeral; her ashes will be scattered near her childhood home in Freeport, at a later date. Lydia’s lifetime love of animals led her to specify that donations to the “Humanitarians” in Inverness be considered, in her memory. Cremation care is under the direction of the Chas E. Davis Funeral Home with Crematory, Inverness, FL.