Louise D. Lantz, 92

NEWPORT — Louise D. Lantz, 92, a resident of Newport, N.H., for 47 years, passed away on April 5, 2018, surrounded by her family.

Louise was born in Keene, N.H., on Feb. 28, 1926 to Hazel Fairbanks Dinkel and Theodore Hart Dinkel. Louise arrived early, with her weight actually dropping to 2 pounds, 13 ounces, but she survived and lived a full, happy and healthy life.

Louise grew up during the Great Depression with her two younger brothers, Ted and Jack, and her mother Hazel. She attended school in Keene and enjoyed summers at the family cottage on Crescent Lake in Acworth, N.H., a camp built by her grandfather George Fairbanks in 1913.

Louise graduated from Keene High School in 1944 and worked for Simons’s Jewelers in Keene, where she met her future husband Jim. Jim Lantz was also from Keene and was a watchmaker trained by the GI Bill after World War II. Their marriage lasted 67 years and included the birth of six sons.

The family lived in Keene until 1956, then Brattleboro, Vt., for 15 years, before finally settling in Newport in 1971. In Newport, Louise continued raising her sons while spending her “spare time” working beside her husband at MJ Harrington Jewelers.

Louise is remembered as a good neighbor with a generous spirit. She welcomed and accepted people for who they were. She was a devoted wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother (Nana), and great-grandmother.

Louise loved her six boys especially and helped them stay connected as their lives led them to other parts of the country and other parts of the world. Her New Hampshire license plate for many years bore the number, “LLLLLL” representing her six sons, and like many of her generation, her “family” extended well beyond the front door. “If you were a friend of the family, you were part of the family.”

She showered her family with gifts and never forgot a birthday or anniversary. Her friendships endured for decades, in one case with a Kindergarten classmate from Keene who she still phoned weekly 87 years later. When her husband died in 2014, she received a condolence letter from a childhood acquaintance who remembered her from 77 years earlier.

Louise loved to knit and bake and she shared her creations with countless people over the years. Most local delivery and service people knew her by name, from the milkman in Brattleboro who stopped at her kitchen table along his daily route for morning coffee, to the mail carriers, paper deliverers, and trash truck drivers in Newport.

The gift of her homemade muffins became a Newport institution and a nearly daily delight to customers at MJ Harrington Jewelers in Newport. Louise was very close to her brother Ted, called him every day, and she was deeply saddened when Ted died on Easter Sunday this year.

Louise is predeceased by her husband and her brothers Jack and Ted (Doris).

She is survived by her sons: Jim (Amelia) of Grantham, David (LuAnne) of Sunapee, Doug (Amy) of Hanover, Tom of Sunapee, Jeff (Annie) of Centennial, Colo., and Steve (Patty) of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. Louise has 15 grandchildren: Sarah (Chris), Sandy (Craig), Katie (Andy), Megan, DJ, Riley, Avery, Nate, Colin, Ariel, Andrew, Daniel, Asher, Lyndsay (Burch), and Ryan (Chris), and six great-grandchildren: Wyatt, Annabelle, Haley, Alexandra, Winona, and Eloise. She also leaves behind nine nieces and nephews, and more than a few good men who claimed to be her “seventh son.”

Louise has donated her body to science at the Dartmouth Medical School. There will be no public memorial service per Louise’s request. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that you take a moment each day to remember Louise by being generous, and by doing something nice for a friend or neighbor.

Louise Christina Dinkel Lantz was a member of the “greatest generation.” May she be long-remembered as “a sturdy soul who tended to others.”