Sally (Muther) Lawton

Sally Muther Lawton

              Sally Muther Lawton of 12 Stage Road Westhampton for the past 63 years passed away peacefully on Sunday, October 12, 2025. After attending late afternoon services and a community supper at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Northampton and Florence, she appeared to “go to sleep” in the back seat of her friends’ car on the ride home to Westhampton. CPR was attempted by EMT services and later at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, but to no avail. Sally was 99-1/2 years old, born in Boston, MA on March 28th, 1926, to Marion Hyde Muther and Walter P. Muther. She was predeceased by her husband Ed Lawton, and her eldest son, Larry Nielson (born Edward Lawton.) She leaves behind her daughter Cynthia Lawton-Singer of Conway Massachusetts, and her son James Lawton of Windham, Maine along with their spouses Alan Singer and Liz Slott-Lawton respectively and grand-daughter Kelsea Singer of Turner’s Falls Massachusetts. She was the last living member of her generation of a large extended family of Muthers. and a cousin by marriage to the Hathaways of Vermont and Connecticut. In addition to these family members, Sally leaves behind countless friends she made through the years in her many wide-ranging endeavors.

            Sally Lawton’s early years, marked by the turbulence of the Great Depression, were lived in a nomadic fashion. She moved with Mother Marion, a concert pianist, and Father, Walter, an MIT engineer and WWI pilot, every two years between 1926 and 1947. She lived in Cambridge, Wellesley, Sherburne, Scituate, Cohasset, Norwell (Massachusetts) on to Dayton Ohio (where she graduated from high school) and then San Bernadino, Oakland (Where she attended and graduated in 1947 from Mills College) and Mill Valley, California. Constantly being “the new kid” in schools made social life difficult for Sally during these years and she became adept at self-entertainment.

              Sally developed several very strong interests at a young age that she continued to enjoy pursuing throughout her life. Her perceptive, inquisitive, and highly creative nature was encouraged by like-minded parents. Sally was a voracious reader, a fine painter and a crafter who explored drawing, painting, pottery, origami, botany, flower arranging, sewing, batik-dying, silk-screen printing, biochar making, language skills and science. In the later years of her life, her interest in science turned and focused on climate change and solutions to it.

             In 1950, after College and WWII, the Muther family moved back to the East coast. There Sally attended Harvard Summer School in 1951 where she met Ed Lawton at a July 4th dance. They married six weeks later in August 1951.

             Sally and Ed Lawton became members in 1955 of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Northampton and Florence. The Society provided Sally and her family a place to support their unconventional ideas and aspirations born of the study of science, religion, the sacred and the profane. Sally created amazing, unusual flower arrangements every Sunday for decades, was Director of the Religious Education Program for several years and a soprano in the church choir. She was responsible also for landscaping the front and sunny side of the church property as well as maintaining house plants inside the church in the social hall.

              While in high school, Sally read an article in a book titled “Childbirth Without Fear.” This inspired a passionate forty-year effort to learn about (and demonstrate) the critical importance of women’s reproductive health. She became a fierce proponent of natural childbirth and breast-feeding beginning in the 1950’s. After her first birth, done with general anesthesia, Sally chose to change doctors and had her next two children using natural childbirth techniques. Her third child, James, was born at home in 1960. In the early 1970’s, Sally was a strong advocate for birth control, the availability of legalized, safe abortion and for reproductive health rights for women. She wrote numerous letters “To the Editor,” to public officials, attended meetings and assisted women getting abortions when necessary. Sally designed and produced silk-screened posters announcing natural childbirth, breast-feeding classes and public forums for discussion of women’s reproductive rights.

              Sally was strongly devoted to her family. In the late 1950’s her mother began to develop dementia. In 1962 the Muthers and Lawtons combined households, purchasing and moving to the house at 12 Stage Road. Marion and Walter lived there with their daughter’s family all the remaining days of their lives. The Lawton family also frequently visited Ed’s elderly relatives in South Dartmouth Massachusetts. Sally had a natural interest in children. Sharing and teaching made motherhood natural and enjoyable for her. Projects in clay, cutting paper snowflakes, hearts, drawing, painting, and pastels were common activities as well as enjoying delicious and healthy home-cooked meals. Sally was an early adopter and proponent of healthy eating.

              At home in Westhampton she made gardens, starting with vegetable gardens made in joint effort with Walter. Soon she was taking advantage of having a permanent home, planting all manner of trees, shrubs, and perennials which she would then glean for flower arrangements for Sunday morning services at the UU or use for still-life subjects in a painting. In 1981 Sally and Ed had a sunroom added to their home. This quickly became a greenhouse with two chairs for enjoying lunch in the sun for the aging Ed, Walter, and Sally. The greenhouse provided years of horticultural experiments, wonder and delight. This greenhouse joy continued to the day of Sally’s death.

                Although she was a fierce advocate of education and earned her Master of Education from the University of Massachusetts in the early 1970’s, she found teaching art in the public schools during the early 1970’s to be a joyless enterprise. Sally instead turned her time and attention to shepherding her three teenagers through that turbulent era. During her life, Sally taught art, language, cooking, craft-making, and religious education in numerous venues: public schools, at her beloved UUSNF, in public libraries, at the Castilleja School in Oakland, CA and Williston Academy. Sally belonged to several groups of artists who joined together to draw from live models over the years. She exhibited her paintings and other artworks in many public venues.

               In early mid-life, the Lawton family had lived in Tokyo, Japan for a year. There, Sally taught English-speaking to Japanese businessmen. She added some Japanese language skills to her repertoire of languages with which she had familiarity (Latin, French, Spanish, German, Russian.) Upon returning to the U.S.A. in 1967, the Vietnam War was ramping up. Sally had already lived through WWII and the Korean War. She began looking for solutions to mankind’s propensity to solve differences and problems through aggression and violence. Believing that if we could all meet on neutral ground with a common language, native to no one, that people could communicate more productively and avoid settling things with bloodshed. She began a decades-long engagement with the man-made language of Esperanto, Sally attended Esperanto Congress’ in Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Eastern Europe, as well as numerous U.S. locations. She then taught Esperanto in the public schools in Westhampton as a volunteer, believing exposure to language for American children was an educational essential.

             As Sally entered the final decade of her life, she experienced an eye-stroke that reduced her sight and two years later, at 92, liver cancer from which she miraculously recovered from 100% without recurrence. Her activities grew closer to home as she quit driving at 97. True to her indominable self, she used this as an opportunity to focus and read extensively on her last passionate concern: how to reverse climate change and regenerate the earth. Anyone who encountered Sally in a conversation will remember being told about her latest book. Teaching us some of the interesting ideas it contained for solving our destructive land use, agricultural practices, over-consumption, energy production, and social inequality. She also loved reading Houdini’s biography, Ruth Simmons’ autobiography, “Up Home: One Girl’s Journey” and “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk.” She would read and re-read to digest every bit of what the author had to offer and then share that with anyone who visited her. Sally never stopped learning, teaching, and living her life to the fullest. Not even for one day.