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Obituary: Ann Willets Boyd, a writer whose interesting life provided her topics
Thursday, November 23, 2000 By Bob Batz Jr., Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Ann Willets Boyd was an imaginative and skillful writer of fiction, but one of the most interesting things she ever wrote must be the basic true story of her life that she prepared in advance for her own obituary.
In it, Mrs. Boyd, who was born in 1919 in Sewickley, quickly covered having attended Sewickley Academy, Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Conn., and the University of Florence in Italy, where she studied painting.
All this was before World War II, when she served as a civilian with the Office of Strategic Services, briefing and debriefing spies in Europe and North Africa.
Afterward, she moved to New York City, where she studied writing at Columbia University, hobnobbed with writers and editors, and wound up writing two novels that were published by Random House in the early 1950s.
The businessman she married in 1954, William Boyd Jr., said those books drew on the rich life experiences of his wife, who had a taste for them.
Mrs. Boyd, 81, of Sewickley, died Tuesday of pneumonia at Sewickley Valley Hospital.
Her legacy includes her two published books, which her husband said "were very widely reviewed, and very well reviewed."
He described "Never Give the Heart" (1951) as a tale of "young people growing up in a community like Sewickley," which also is where he grew up, within blocks of his future wife. "Sting of Glory" (1954) was based on her exotic OSS job, which she got thanks to a family friend, he said.
Boyd, now retired as a senior vice president at Pittsburgh National Bank, said he doesn't think she would have fit into the Navy, where he served.
"She was not particularly good at taking orders," he said.
Once the couple moved to Sewickley, Mrs. Boyd did become a very good soldier for various groups, including the Pressley Ridge Schools for troubled children, for which she was a longtime trustee.
One of her favorites was the Women's Committee of the Carnegie Museum of Art, which she helped in many ways.
Fellow member Toto Fisher recalled how Mrs. Boyd would lend her writing talents, even to creating marketing materials to help sell a fund-raising cookbook.
"She wrote with a real flair," said Fisher, who also belonged, as Boyd did, to the Garden Club of Allegheny County. Several years ago, Mrs. Boyd researched and wrote a history of that group that is still used and appreciated today.
Mrs. Boyd loved to garden, whether it was in her award-winning garden in Sewickley, or at the 13th- to 15th-century farmhouse that the globe-trotting -- and globe-sailing -- couple bought in Florence in 1983.
Her specialty was dwarf conifers, and she was generous about sharing her gardens and her knowledge, Fisher said.
"She was such a stunning woman. ... A woman with enormous taste and style," she said.
Mrs. Boyd was extremely well-read and well-dressed, her husband said, but "she was not flamboyant." Always fearful of talking in front of groups, she took a rather more quiet approach.
She was, after all, a writer, and one who did work on other projects over the years, including one book, "The Dance of the Corporate Wives," to which Boyd lent his experience as a corporate husband.
But she didn't aggressively push it, he said, and "it didn't quite make it."
She did write a history of Sewickley Academy, where the new library includes a quiet reading room that was a gift from her and her husband.
Besides him, Mrs. Boyd is survived by her daughter, Spencer Boyd of Chester, Conn., and one granddaughter.
Visitation will be from 4 to 6 and 7 to 9 p.m. tomorrow at the family home on Woodland Road, Sewickley.
Funeral services will be private, with burial to be in Belmont, N.Y. Copeland's Irvin Chapel in Sewickley is handing arrangements.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Women's Committee, The Carnegie Institute, 4400 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh 15213.
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