Longtime resident, avid gardener, town volunteer
Joan Dillard. (Courtesy photo)
Joan Dillard, a longtime resident of Harvard and active member of many community organizations, passed away Sept. 30, 2017.
Harvard has always been a beautiful and extraordinary town. Joan and Bob Dillard sensed this immediately when they moved their young family from Wenham to the old yellow house on Fairbank Street in 1960. Their children Susan, Robert, and Elizabeth would be joined by the birth of Sarah in 1961. The children experienced the kind of idyllic childhood most who don’t know Harvard believe to have disappeared long ago.
Joan quickly became an active member of the town, joining first the Woman’s Club and then the Garden Club, where her leadership and presidency are still fondly remembered. Over the years she became involved with the Conservation Commission and later the Philanthropic Educational Organization (P.E.O.), which provides educational opportunities for women by offering scholarships, grants, awards, and loans to help women enhance their lives through learning. She was also a member of the Historical Society. In summer, she was a familiar fixture at Fruitlands Museum, where she worked as a guide and sourced herbs and flowers from her beloved gardens on Bolton Road for display and demonstrations. Her gardens were often opened to the public and drew interested gardeners from near and far. She was known among horticultural circles for her breeding acumen with plants and for her active involvement with the American Hemerocallis Society. Joan helped Dorothy Andrews and others create “Harvard Trails” and “Ancient, Historic, and Notable Trees of Harvard,” publications of the Harvard Conservation Trust and the Garden Club of Harvard, respectively. Until five years ago she served as a poll worker every election day.
After her children were grown, educated, and launched, she was able to enjoy many travel adventures with family and friends, including trips to Oregon and California, cruises in the Caribbean and to Mexico and Venezuela, and explorations of Scotland, England, France, Germany, and Canada.
Joan was born Joan Wilder Spalding in South Weymouth to Gertrude Snow, a surgical nurse, and her husband, Dr. Harold Archibald Spalding. Upon her parents’ divorce, Joan and her mother moved first to Vermont and then Ellsworth, Maine, for Gertrude’s work as a Red Cross disaster relief nurse. It wasn’t long before love blossomed between Gertrude and their landlord, Roy Parker Allen, a lumber and wild blueberry magnate. Although she remained very close to her father throughout his life, Joan was formally adopted by her new stepfather in 1935, taking his name and becoming Joan Wilder Allen. Joan spent her childhood with her two new stepbrothers in Blue Hill and Sedgwick, Maine, developing a deep and passionate love for the land and the area. As an adult she returned at least once a year, instilling that same love of the area in her husband and her children.
Joan graduated from Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine, and the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. After college she moved to Boston, thoroughly enjoying that city and her life as a single working woman. Soon she met Navy veteran and young electrical engineer Robert Wynde Dillard. They were married in 1951 and honeymooned on Prince Edward Island, the Canada birthplace of her grandmother, Ada Lord Spalding.
Joan is predeceased by her husband, Robert Wynde Dillard; her brother Wayne Robert Allen (Helene); and her brother-in-law Edward Ford Dillard (Bernadette). She is survived by her brother Kermit Parker Allen (Jane); her four children, Susan Lord Malick and husband John, Robert Allen Dillard and friend Joanna T. Bentley, Elizabeth Wynde Dillard, Sarah Wilder Dillard and husband Gregory L. Carr; her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Lauren Wilder Dillard, Andrew Spalding Malick and wife Linda Skemp, Mollie Malick Bigley and husband David and their children Madeline Louise Bigley and James Andrew Bigley, and Nichols Ford Malick and wife Rebecca Taylor and their children Juliet Caroline Malick and Eloise Harper Malick. Joan is also survived by scores of nieces, nephews, and their families. She was and is loved and cherished by all her family and friends.
A memorial will be held for Joan at 2 p.m. Dec. 2, 2017, in Volunteers Hall at the Harvard Public Library.
Donations in Joan’s name may be made to The Garden Club of Harvard, P.O. Box 105, Harvard, MA 01451, or to P.E.O. Chapter AO Harvard c/o Gayle Coit, 242 Old Littleton Road, Harvard, MA 01451.
