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Matilda Horn Purnell, longtime local activist

May 31, 2023

Matilda “Til” Horn Purnell died peacefully Sunday, May 28, 2023, after a long life filled with travel, celebrations, skilled diplomacy, spirited activism, and the love of her family and dear friends.

Til was born in Hell’s Kitchen, N.Y., to Nettie Tappan and William Arden Horn. Her parents had grown up in Delaware, and during Til’s childhood, they divided their time between New York City and Rehoboth Beach. Til would later return to live near Rehoboth and become an inspired defender of southern Delaware’s estuaries and wetlands.

Til married Lewis (Skipper) M. Purnell in 1945. The couple joined the Foreign Service and together spent more than 30 years representing the United States in countries around the world: Italy, Myanmar (Burma then), Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Jamaica, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines. To that partnership, she contributed her organizational skills and proficiency in languages — Burmese, Bahasa Melayu (Indonesian, Malaysian), Japanese, Italian and French — as well as her grace and wit. The weekly letters she wrote to her family back home are vivid evocations of their colorful and fast-paced diplomatic life. For special occasions (Christmas, birthdays) she also wrote, and would continue to write until close to the end of her life, doggerel of incomparable virtuosity. 

On their retirement in 1976, Til and Skipper moved to the shores of Herring Creek, an estuary of Rehoboth Bay. In her post-diplomatic life, Til was active in the League of Women Voters, Possum Point Players and the Sierra Club. She found her true voice and passion in protecting the estuaries, bays and wetlands of coastal Delaware. She was a perennial presence at meetings of the Sussex County Council, keeping a skeptical eye on the council’s pro-sprawl proclivities. Her fierce, well-turned letters to the editor, stirring opposition to proposals threatening the coastal environment, were a favorite of the local press. 

Til helped found the Delaware Center for the Inland Bays, a private, nonprofit National Estuary Program dedicated to the restoration and preservation of these vulnerable local watersheds. In 2005, the Sierra Club recognized her dauntless advocacy with its National Special Services Award. The Cape Gazette wrote then: “For the past 28 years, Purnell has been an environmental warrior champion who has worked fearlessly and tirelessly to protect Delaware’s Inland Bays from unbridled development pressures.” That year, the Delaware Legislature voted to name the state’s 599-acre Angola Neck Nature Preserve in her honor.

In 2006, Til and Skipper moved to Free Union, Va., to be near her daughter and family. Til took endless delight in the views of the Blue Ridge through her windows and was a proud Free Union homemaker. 

Skipper preceded her in death. She is survived by her daughter, Alice Purnell Cannon (Jon); three grandchildren, Ariel, Maia (Jeremy Carr) and Ben (Katie Goldman-McDonald); and five great-grandchildren, Elizabeth Carr, Samuel, Ruth and Nathan Wigotsky, and Lew Goldman-Cannon. 

The family is deeply grateful to the staff and administration of Charlottesville’s Martha Jefferson House for their devoted care.

Gifts in Til’s memory may be made to Planned Parenthood - Charlottesville Health Center, Barrett Early Learning Center of Charlottesville, or the Sierra Club’s Piedmont Group.

 

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