Though I didn't notice at the time, Sue snapped this photo of me chatting with Cecelia Abbott at the 2009 Seabean Symposium.
I have received news of the passing–Thursday morning, October 28, 2010– of Cecelia White Abbott, adventurer, shell enthusiast and wife of the late R. Tucker Abbott.
I first met Cecelia Abbott during the 2008 International Seabean Symposium in Cocoa Beach. My friend Marge Bell introduced her to me as the wife of the late R. Tucker Abbott, a giant in the world of shell science. I believe I was introduced to her as a writer.
Mrs. Abbott took great pleasure in recounting her adventurous life traveling the world with Mr. Abbott–the shell giant–and I was her enraptured audience of one, straining to hear her soft voice, which was easily overpowered by the background conversations of the Symposium crowd.
How I would have loved to have gotten her stories on video to share. But I was equipped with neither the time nor the equipment to do justice to such a project, so it was not to be.
Robert Lewis Stevenson wrote “It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire.” In that regard, her efforts have surely made us all richer.
May she rest in peace.
Cecelia Abbott and Matt MacQueen discussing seabeans at the 2009 International Seabean Symposium in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
Cecelia White Abbott obituary notice in Florida Today newspaper.
