A dynamic art gallery entrepreneur
Published April 10, 2019
WOBURN — In the loving company of her immediate family, Marilyn Caulfield, 84, died of late-stage complications of Alzheimer’s disease in Woburn on April 4, 2019.
Born to Ivadelle and Leon Le Blanc in Swampscott on June 17, 1934, Marilyn embodied the spirit of a verse her maternal grandmother immortalized in needlepoint to celebrate the new baby’s arrival: “A child of June gives all away, to brighten everybody’s day.”
Together with her older sister, Dorothy, and her younger sister, Corrine, Marilyn grew up in Lynn. Leon and Ivadelle doted on their girls.
Marilyn was awarded the superlative “The Sweetheart of Lynn English High School” in her 1952 yearbook. When she received her diploma in June of that year, Marilyn was already engaged to former all-scholastic Lynn English football player Robert O. Caulfield. Robert, who was 21, had recently mustered out of the Marine Corps, with dreams of becoming a landscape artist. She and Robert eloped to New Hampshire on an August evening later that summer.
By 1965, Marilyn and Robert and their five children had outgrown their house in Lynn, and moved to a 200-year-old colonial on Main Street in Lynnfield. When her youngest son entered elementary school in 1971, Marilyn accepted a full-time position as assistant treasurer at the Lynnfield Town Hall.
In 1985, Marilyn and Robert left their secure suburban lifestyle and opened The Robert O. Caulfield Art Gallery in Woodstock, Vermont. As Robert’s work started selling more consistently, Marilyn devoted her formidable sales skills to selling her husband’s oil paintings, watercolors, and lithographs.
During the 35 years the Caulfield Art Gallery was in operation, Marilyn and Robert sold over 3,000 of his original oil paintings and watercolors. The two working-class kids from Lynn — who had once scrimped for every penny, struggling from paycheck to paycheck —spent the past two decades living in one of the finest mansions on Woodstock’s Village Green.
Marilyn’s husband, Robert, and her five children, Robert, Cynthia, Craig, Lorelle, and Wayne, survive her, as do her children’s spouses, Patricia, Paul, and Ariadna.
Marilyn is also survived by her 11 grandchildren: Kelly, Todd, Krystle, Kimberly, Brian, Kaitlin, Brendan, Travis, Camille, Julia and Brooke. She is also survived by her nine great-grandchildren: Trenton, Fiona, Kayla, Kenzie, Emma, Hannah, Blake, Ellie and Arlo.
Marilyn’s sister, Corinne Wallace, predeceased her. Her brother-in-law, George Wallace, survives her, as do her sister, Dorothy Hunt, and her brother-in-law, Donald.
Marilyn was emphatic in her choice of a traditional burial. As she once said, “I don’t want to be cremated. I never liked to smoke.”
Visitation for relatives and friends will be held at the Centre Congregational Church, 5 Summer St., on Friday, April 12 from 9:30-11 a.m. with a funeral service to follow beginning at 11 a.m. Interment will be at Forest Hill Cemetery in Lynnfield. Arrangements are in the care of the McDonald Funeral Home, 19 Yale Ave., Wakefield.
In lieu of flowers, contributions to the Alzheimer’s Association at www.alz.org would be appreciated.
