Margaret "Molly" Peckham passed on August 17, 2022, in her home at Meadow Ridge, in Redding, CT.  Molly was born Margaret Hardcastle Drake on the 18 ^th of September, 1940 in Berwyn, PA to the late William Plummer Drake and Margaret Maynadier Hardcastle. As a young girl Molly enjoyed roaming the woods and fields of then-rural Berwyn, PA, with her brothers, sisters, and dogs, and swimming, sailing, and messing about on Bath, Maine's Winnegance Bay.

Molly attended the Baldwin School, studied at Pine Manor, and graduated with a degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania.  She was married in 1963 to S. Hoyt Peckham, and they moved to New Canaan, CT in 1965. They welcomed their children, Margie and Hoyt, in 1968 and 1973. Molly was an active member of the New Canaan Garden Club in those years and an avid gardener all her life. She also sang in the choir at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in New Canaan.

After receiving a master's in literature from Columbia University, Molly taught English at Rosemary Hall and then worked at the New Canaan Bookstore to support her lifelong reading habit. She joined the faculty of the New Canaan Country School in 1979 where she taught Latin and Classics to more than 1,000 middle schoolers over 20 years.

Molly and Hoyt were amicably divorced in 1981, and she began a lifetime of psychological and spiritual exploration. During subsequent years Molly courageously undertook intensive therapy in an effort to overcome childhood and intergenerational trauma. In 1982 she joined the Benedictine Grange in Redding, CT an inclusive Catholic spiritual community of which she was an active member until her passing.

In 1999 Molly took a sabbatical from the Country School and used it to teach English to Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala, India. She stayed in Dharamsala after her sabbatical to co-author a textbook on Tibetan history for Tibetan refugee children under commission by the Dalai Lama's sister. From Dharamsala, Molly then went to Kathmandu where she practiced Tibetan Buddhism with Lama Kalsang for more than a decade.

Molly returned to New Canaan during the annual monsoon seasons to be with family and friends, and she began teaching English as a second language at Norwalk Community College. Empowering immigrants from a diversity of backgrounds and cultures to master English and realize their American dream was, perhaps, her most fulfilling work.

She is survived by her daughter Margie Depew (John Depew) of Pound Ridge, NY, by her son Hoyt Peckham, Jr. (Pilar Llanes Estrada) and granddaughters Marina, Isabel, and Anaís of Hoyo de Manzanares, Spain and by her siblings Jim, Sally, and Bill Drake of Maine and Anne Mowat of Oregon.

Molly is remembered as exceedingly gentle, kind, and generous, as well as fiercely principled and surprisingly adventurous. She cherished literature, music, plants and animals, none more than her own grand-animals. She credited the surprisingly personable Depew chickens, ducks, and two parrots, with broadening her open-mindedness and the Peckham-Llanes dogs with teaching her to swim with whale sharks.

A service of remembrance will be held at the Unitarian Church in Westport on what will be her 83 ^rd birthday, Sunday, September 18 ^th , at 3:00 p.m. We would love to hear how others knew and remember her by sharing your memories at www.boutonfuneralhome.com.  Please, no flowers unless you pick them yourself as Molly always appreciated, and send any donations in her honor to the Tibet Fund ( www.tibetfund.org ).