Dorothy Post Stevens, an ardent bibliophile, popular librarian and mentor to a generation of students attending Warwick public schools in the 1960's through the 1980's, died peacefully on June 28 at the Village at Waterman Lake in Smithfield.
Born on March 26, 1929 in Burlington, Vermont, she was the daughter of Helene Clay Post and Archibald Thomson Post, a University of Vermont professor and athletic coach from 1929 to 1969. One week after earning her BA in English from the University of Vermont, she married Thomas Dexter Stevens of Hartford, Connecticut on June 12, 1951. Tom was a photographer with the Hartford Courant from 1946 to 1951 and the Providence Journal from 1951 to 1989. They were married 55 years. He passed away in 2006. "Dottie" was a woman small in size yet boundless in enthusiasm about her passions: children, books, cats, classical music, opera, Gilbert and Sullivan, public television and radio, sailing, tennis, crossword puzzles, the color blue, all things Vermont, and adopting various wayward friends of her children as her own.
In the midst of raising four children, including a developmentally disabled youngest son, she earned her master's degree in Library Science at the University of Rhode Island in 1970. She served as librarian at a succession of elementary schools, Lockwood Junior High, completing her career as co-head librarian at Tollgate High School. She and her husband Tom were long time members of the East Greenwich Yacht Club, East Greenwich United Methodist Church, the Academy Players, the International NonSuch Association and the National Triton Association.
She will be missed by her three children and their families: Jonathan Stevens and his wife, Teresa of Cranston and their children Acadia and Samuel; a daughter Jill Stevens Moss and her husband, James of Scituate and their children Nathanael of Portland, Oregon and Bryan of Providence; and son Jeffrey and his wife, Kimberly of East Greenwich and their children Myles and Julia. Her son Jeremy died of muscular dystrophy in 1979. She also leaves a sister Jean Post Lamphear of Shelburne, VT.
A celebration of her life will take place at the Meeting House of the New England Wireless and Steam Museum, 1300 Frenchtown Road, East Greenwich, on Saturday, August 8, at 9 a.m.
