After a short struggle with COVID, Cornelia Terese O'Dowd Huber, aged 94, formerly of Acton, MA, died on January 27th, 2023.

Connie was born on December 4, 1928, the youngest of three children, always racing to catch up. Her childhood home at 136 Park Street in Lawrence, MA, was a triple-decker; her family lived in an apartment on the third floor and her grandfather ran a shop at street level. She was proud to have skipped two grades in primary school, to have been a champion softball pitcher, and—according to the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune—to have "stolen the show" in a school marbles tournament competing against much older boys. But she also always felt she had to work hard—harder—and she did. She championed women's education and was a proud graduate of Wheaton College ('49), where she met some of her dearest and lifelong friends.

After college, she was hired at Boston University and later at Arthur D. Little. She met Robert F. (Bob) Huber at ADL and was drawn to his warm self-possession and intelligence; they wed in 1960. She loved him deeply and relied on his devotion and steadiness until his death in 2012. Her love for him was sure and unruly enough to know that the only way to keep his more conservative voting habits from effectively canceling out her own was to try, often flamboyantly and comically, to thwart him on election days. They were built of different strong and stubborn things, and drawn to their differences, often with enormous sweetness and devotion.

Connie believed in service and acted locally. During the half century that she and Bob made their home in Acton, among other efforts, she served on the Acton Youth Commission, the board of the Council on Aging, was a trustee of the Elizabeth White Fund, and was president of the Acton Memorial Library Foundation. She was an active member of the League of Women Voters for 45 years and worked as Acton's Town Clerk for many years.

She was a reader—of novels, newspapers, and town meeting warrants; she loved a good small-town parade, playing cards at the beach, walking and talking with friends. She was disciplined of habits and tended toward simple pleasures; she adored pink grapefruits, red pistachios, green olives. She liked the warm shallow beach at Tashmoo best. Whatever she liked herself, she found better in the company of family and friends, and she celebrated that preference.

Connie was tender and funny; family pets left in her care would receive buttered toast with marmalade for breakfast. She had no use for outward malice and was warm to everyone. She loved to tease and be teased. She took enormous pleasure in games of any kind--a self-professed card shark, crossword pro, badminton black belt, and charades ninja. She could outspell a school spelling bee champion and would do so with glee. Still for all her competitive bluster, she would never in cribbage invoke the Muggins, a standard rule whereby one may "steal" the points that your opponent scores but fails to record, as she did not have it in her to profit from another's error.

She is survived by her children, Jane F. Huber, AB Huber, their partners Gerald Kiwanuka and Lauren Kaminsky, and her grandchildren Ezekiel Okello Kiwanuka and Heron K. Huber. Connie is also survived by many dear friends who enriched her life immeasurably.

Connie cultivated her virtues, but she knew the value of minor vices: at her last birthday party in December, she drank champagne, ate ice cream, and pledged to celebrate her 100th in Paris, with the ample cocktails and the cigarettes she had forgone for some years. Let us celebrate her now.

In the still long shadow of COVID, her family will hold a small private Mass at Holy Family Parish in Concord, but Connie loved fellowship and stories, and our hope is that friends will honor her long life and many virtues with remembrances, a toast at your table, and thought to what is good and blessed and just plain pleasurable in this life.

Donations may be made in her name to the Acton Memorial Library Foundation , PO Box 2781, Acton, MA 01720.

Arrangements are under the care of Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord.