TOPSHAM – Paula Whitney Wood, 84 years old, died June 25 2024, in Topsham. Paula was born in Cambridge, Mass. on Nov. 16, 1939, the daughter of Paul C. Whitney and Ruth Gayton Whitney of Belmont, where Paula grew up and attended public schools.

Following high school she attended Mount Holyoke College, where she soon met the man who would become her husband, David V. V. Wood, a student at nearby Amherst College. The two were married shortly after her graduation with a degree in chemistry, and both began federal civil service jobs in Washington D.C. Dave was commissioned in the US Coast Guard in 1962, and the couple moved to Sitka, Alaska for a two year assignment; their first son, Kenneth (now of Winchester, Mass.) was born there a month after they arrived. Two other sons, Geoffrey (now of Mt. Desert, Maine) and Peter (now of Amherst, Mass.) arrived in the ensuing years as Dave changed Coast Guard assignments.

Once the kids were all in school, Paula took Montessori training and in 1976 she founded the Montessori School of Wayland, Mass., where the family had moved the previous year. They settled in Newport, RI after Dave’s retirement in 1992, and lived there until 2014, singing in the Swanhurst Chorus and doing considerable traveling-to Europe, and to Australia and New Zealand, before moving to The Highlands retirement community in Topsham, Maine. This put them close to Paula’s family cottage on Peaks Island, and to Dave’s family camp on lower Sysladobsis lake in Lakeville, Maine.

Paula is survived by her husband; their three sons; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandson.

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