Whether she was scaling a ladder at age 87 to install solar panels on her church or mobilizing community members to plant trees in her beloved Providence, Peggy Boyd Sharpe was constantly at work — sitting still wasn’t in her vocabulary. A staunch environmentalist, her impacts on the natural world and those she loved were innumerable. Peggy passed away peacefully in Massachusetts on June 22, 2024. She was 96.
Peggy was born in Coral Gables, Florida, on October 27, 1927, to Helen Anderson Boyd and Elbridge Sewell Boyd. When she was 12, her family moved to Sarasota, Florida, a community where they developed deep connections and an appreciation for the surrounding landscape and natural habitats. She graduated from the Madeira School, Sarah Lawrence College, and RISD.
She married her cherished husband, Henry D. Sharpe Jr., on August 1, 1953, beginning a lifelong, devoted partnership. Together, they built a beautiful, contemporary house, intimate with the landscape and woodlands. There, they entertained a worldwide cast of Brown & Sharpe business associates and community members. Unfazed, Peggy cooked for these gatherings with flair. With an abiding interest in connecting people from different walks of life, they worked as a team to champion many business, civic, and personal endeavors.
Building on her childhood love of Florida’s natural world, Peggy, ahead of the times, took the lead as an ardent environmentalist. In the early 1970s, as the U.S. Navy shut down its base at Quonset Point to open swaths of shoreline for development, her efforts to do it responsibly led to an Environmental Impact Statement, a national precedent at the time. She opposed the plan to put a nuclear reactor at Rome Point. She was a member of The Nature Conservancy’s Global Board of Directors, and, subsequently, the driving force for establishing its Rhode Island office. She was an instrumental catalyst for the Conservation Law Foundation’s Rhode Island efforts.
Years before other states recognized the need, she helped lay the groundwork for Rhode Island’s statewide (and later, nationally recognized) recycling program as chairman of the Citizens Advisory Board of the Rhode Island Solid Waste Management Corp. Working with the Rhode Island Garden Club in 1983, she produced lectures and a movie about water policy. For years, she steered the Providence Neighborhood Planting Program, an organization that unites neighborhoods in the city to plant street trees (15,500 to date). She was a fervent advocate for Brown University’s Center for Environmental Studies. And, with her husband Hank, she was a key player in making Rhode Island’s NPR affiliate, The Public’s Radio, a reality.
Peggy was curious, strong-willed, and tenacious; a behind-the-scenes networker who knew everyone. She was always willing to jump into big projects. She was organized and detail oriented, with notes going back years documenting the players, decisions, and progress on these efforts. She used her laptop, and her iPhone (which delighted her) to recruit others, and to make their growing vision happen, happily firing off email, texts, and photos to all. If you hadn’t seen her in a while, her totebag would eventually emerge and she’d pull out articles covered with notes on topics she thought you might care about and have an opinion on. “Before you go, look at this! And this! Aren’t they interesting? Let’s talk about them soon!”
Throughout life, design was important to her. Proportion, symmetry, and layout mattered deeply. This manifested in garden landscapes and house layouts that were light-filled and quietly satisfying. The things she wrote and worked on were formatted just-so, as ways to communicate effectively.
She was also deeply interested and committed to natural landscapes and native, wild plants. How she beamed when an endangered plant species was discovered on her property!
Finally, she was a lifelong, enthusiastic tennis player. At the end, she was still playing once a week.
Peggy was a force of nature; you couldn’t keep her down. She made a difference. And she will be missed.
Peggy is survived by her three children, Henry, Douglas, and Sarah; their spouses; and her five grandchildren.
Services in her honor will be on the porch at Newbury Court on July 11 at 11 a.m., as well as at First Unitarian Church in Providence at 4 p.m. on October 19th.
Please send any donations in her honor to the Providence Neighborhood Planting Program (pnpp.org).
Arrangements are entrusted to Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord. To share a memory or to offer a condolence in Peggy’s online guestbook, please visit www.DeeFuneralHome.com.
