Anne Zettek

Anne Ewing Zettek, age 98, passed away on March 12, 2026. She was born April 13, 1927, and grew up at Pickering Creek Farm in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. As the second of five children and only daughter to Joseph and Anne Ewing, she often described her childhood as idyllic. She and her beloved Grey Eagle won many ribbons at the Devon Horse Show. Summers were spent at the family home, Altamira, in Jamestown, Rhode Island, where she learned to sail on Narragansett Bay. She attended The Shipley School during the school year and enjoyed playing the piano as well as sports at school.

As a teenager, she developed an independent streak and chose to attend Radcliffe College in Cambridge, where she majored in Russian history. Friends Irina and Dimitri Poutiatine introduced her to Charles, a Harvard student, and they married in 1949. After she graduated magna cum laude, they decided on eastern Massachusetts as the place to settle and raise a family. They bought a house on a hill in the woods of Hopkinton, where Anne lived past her 96th birthday.

Anne helped found The Kiddie Group, local mothers who would get together to socialize while their kids played. St. Mark’s Church in Southborough was an important focal point for the family. She loved to garden and the outdoors, and over time, she raised sheep, goats, chickens and horses. Always active, she greatly enjoyed the thrill of competition, including playing bridge and tennis in her heyday, or watching sports as she did until her final days.

Spring, with the return of songbirds and the blooming of flowers in her gardens, was Anne’s favorite time of year. Living a quarter-mile from the start of the Boston Marathon, she hosted dozens of both runners and spectators from all over. She enjoyed spending time with visitors from all corners of the globe, and, during the second half of her life, would spend as much time as possible on Narragansett Bay as skipper of her sailboat, At Last. A highlight of every autumn was Thanksgiving, when the dining room table would be expanded to full length to gather family and friends. Her favorite winter memories included skiing and socializing in February at the Lake Placid Club in the beautiful Adirondacks, sledding down the driveway and skating on the pond at home.

As the older children started leaving home, she hosted foreign university students participating in a work/study program at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company. Over two decades, she and Charles also shared their home with visitors from Africa, Europe and the Middle East. At the same time, she served several terms as an elected member of the Hopkinton School Committee, held a part-time job in elder care services and worked at a local farm.

Playing the piano into her late 90s personified her love of, and appreciation for, music. Along with sharing this passion with Charles and their children, she sang in the church choir and the Hopkinton Ecumenical Choir, and she occasionally taught piano. She also served on the Board of Framingham Community Concerts, devoted to bringing professional musicians to the Greater Boston area, and still enjoyed attending concerts with friends until her final years.

The need to satisfy her insatiable curiosity led her to take adult education courses, maintain close bonds with many dear friends and travel across the United States and Canada, to many countries in Europe and to Russia. Keeping current with the news and sharing her knowledge of the world with others were attributes appreciated by many.

Anne is survived by a brother, William H. Ewing, her children Charles Jr. (Judy), Anne, Michael (Barbara), Sarah and Matthew (Cindy), eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by her loving husband of 62 years, Charles. She always wanted to be “in the know” and greatly appreciated talking with, and about, relatives and dear friends. Her legacy of thinking of others, enjoying intellectual stimulation, and her joie de vivre will live on as she seeks smooth sailing on her next adventure.

Family and friends are invited to gather for the interment of Anne’s ashes and a celebration of her life at the Memorial Garden at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Southborough on Saturday, June 27, at 10 a.m., to be followed by light refreshments from 10:30 a.m. to noon. In lieu of flowers, donations in Anne’s memory can be made to either Friends of Hopkinton Seniors, 28 Mayhew Street, Hopkinton, MA 01748, or the Conservation Law Foundation, 62 Summer Street, Boston, MA 02110 (CLF.org). Arrangements are under the care of the Chesmore Funeral Home of Hopkinton.

Obituaries are submissions, typically from funeral homes, that are not subject to the same level of editorial oversight as the rest of the Hopkinton Independent. Obituaries may be edited for grammatical and factual mistakes and clarifications and shortened for space considerations.