Carole’s Obituary
Carole C. (Litty) Fitch was an instinctive visionary. She devoted her life quietly to her family, her neighbors, her community, and those whom she believed the world had forgotten: the lost, the lonely, the homeless, the mentally impaired.
Carole was born in Baltimore in 1934. Although her heart remained there and along her beloved Chesapeake Bay, she became an adoptive New Englander in 1952 when she enrolled in the University of New Hampshire and later moved to Cape Cod. In 1982 she settled in Boxford, where she resided until her death on January 8 after a brief illness at The Kaplan Family Hospice House surrounded by three generations of family.
An early champion of energy conservation, she drove the first Toyota Corolla in 1968 because “it gets 50 miles per gallon and we have to do our part since someday the oil supply is going to run out.” She later spearheaded a drive to build one of the first waste oil recycling facilities in Essex County to help protect Boxford’s groundwater. And nothing, nothing, ever left her house in a plastic bag that could not be recycled.
Carole worked closely for over twenty years with the mentally impaired in Lawrence as a case worker with Fidelity House, helping them integrate and flourish in community-based residences. But she was much more than a manager to her “clients,” she was a dear and trusted friend, the only one many of them ever had. Each one had her home telephone number and an invitation to call anytime for any reason.
When an unmarked burial ground was uncovered on the grounds of the old Danvers State Hospital in the late 1980’s, she quietly organized a group of “clients” and their peers to honor these “forgotten souls” and ensure that their remains were moved and reinterred “with dignity and honor.” She sometimes mused that she wasn’t certain that God existed, but if He did, He could be seen in the eyes and hearts of her “people.”
Carole lived and honored the simple life. Good olive oil was her favorite present. She swooned over Pimms No. 1 and raw milk crème fraiche. But otherwise, she believed that good books, good soil, a view from the kitchen window, and a hose long enough to reach were the keys to a rich life. And she knew and practiced the maxim that changing the world, like charity, begins at home.
