Peggy Virginia Wilford of East Hampton and Hernando, Fla., was a mother above all else “and a light on this earth,” her family said. “She loved us in a way nobody else does. No matter what happened in her life she always came to every person and situation with joy and love and kindness,” her granddaughter Ida Grace Virginia Fendell wrote.
Mrs. Wilford died on March 24 — “Palm Sunday and the night of a lunar eclipse,” her family noted — at Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead. She was 87 and had been in declining health for the past six months.
Mrs. Wilford had been a social worker and “spent decades taking care of children in foster care” on the East End. She also worked as a substitute teacher at Pierson High School in Sag Harbor in the 1970s, and was frequently called in to cover a class known as the Sweathogs, after characters in “Welcome Back, Kotter,” a popular TV sitcom at the time.
Her family said she was “a greatly loved member of both her communities in East Hampton and in Florida,” where she spent part of each year for the past 25 years.
Married to James (Newt) Wilford for 49 years, she was “the best mother and grandmother that anyone could ask for,” her family said. “She felt like an angel, and when she hugged you, you felt like everything was all right in this world.”
“She was incredibly smart, incredibly sweet, and always wanted to be learning new things,” Ms. Fendell wrote. “Her faith was powerful and important to her.”
Mrs. Wilford had been a member of the choir at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Bridgehampton and other churches on the East End, and belonged to Unity Church of Lecanto in Florida for 20 years.
She was born on Long Island on May 6, 1936, to Horace Klenk and the former Laura Dugan. She grew up in Glen Head and graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by her children, Jon Barton and his wife, Danielle Barton, of Sag Harbor, David Barton of East Hampton, and Ruth Virginia Barton of Massachusetts, and by five grandchildren: Ms. Fendell, Moses, India, and Hugo Barton, and Annabelle Barton. Her son Stephen Timothy Barton died before her.
Also surviving are four siblings, Tim Klenk of Florida, Polly Mondragone of Roslyn Heights, Jack Klenk of Virginia, and Christiana Dugan of Eugene, Ore., and a cousin with whom she was particularly close, Joyce Hamlin of Leonia, N.J.
A funeral will be held tomorrow at 2 p.m. at St. Ann’s in Bridgehampton.
