Nora E. Watters of Chester, Vt., passed away on Monday, April 7, 2025. She was 85.
Bonnie was born on Dec. 7, 1939, in Franklin, N.J., to Francis Patrick Edwards and Lorena Jennings Edwards.
Bonnie grew up in Franklin with her immediate family and, after her mother’s death, in the company of her Aunt Grace, who taught her to sew, with cousins, Doris and Marion, who were like sisters to her.
She graduated from Franklin High School in 1957 and attended Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School in Montclair. While working as an executive assistant to the secretary at Columbia University, she took classes in general studies and writing.
She met her husband and the love of her life, Lew Watters, in 1965 when the U.S.S. Duluth was being commissioned in the Brooklyn Naval Yard. She married Lew on June 22, 1968, in Sparta.
One of Bonnie’s favorite jobs was secretary to the president of the Woodstock Jesuit Seminary in Morningside Heights from 1968 until 1971, when her first child, Kate, was born.
Bonnie and Lew then moved to Westfield, N.J. In 1974, they moved to Chester, Vt., where they became stewards of an 1844 stone house in the historic Stone Village.
The house would be a beloved character in her life story for 50 years: the place where she raised her three girls, made and sold 15,000 dolls, fed people, hosted gatherings and tours, and nurtured gardens and many pets.
Bonnie and Lew were faithful and devoted members of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church during all their years in Chester.
In 1968, Bonnie began sewing unique creations: calico-stuffed animals, versions of Raggedy Ann, and in 1972, her first original doll, Eliza. Her doll-making was a hobby that flourished as a business when they moved to Vermont, where she opened a retail shop and sewing studio in 1979. The tagline, “Your eyes won’t believe our eyes,” referred to the unique motifs for eyes: letters, flowers, insects, even a Tiffany lampshade.
Bonnie licensed her original designs to Butterick Patterns in the 1980s. The highlight of Bonnie’s Bundles was the visitors who came to the shop on North Street in the Stone Village and often were invited to enjoy tea and brownies.
Bonnie started working at the Student Conservation Association as an administrative assistant in 1989, when her daughters began to leave home for college. At SCA, she managed billing and coordinated finances for student volunteers to work in national parks and public lands.
In 2006, after her retirement, Bonnie and Lew visited the parks, national forests and monuments and people with whom she spent hours over the phone in her job. For three months, they volunteered, camped and stayed with friends along the way and made many memories with their Arizona daughters.
In her retirement years, Bonnie wrote stories about her dolls, documenting her ideas in stacks of journals. In 2009, she began writing a blog on her doll website. She self-published a book, “A Dozen Cats Plus One Who Sew.”
She took up a long-held dream to cultivate flowers, a wildflower meadow, and vegetable garden in their wild backyard at the foot of Flamstead Mountain. She became inspired to write poetry after taking a workshop at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Park, adding poetry and gardening to her daily creative practice.
Bonnie was fiercely devoted to her family, friends, doll customers and the community of Chester, staying connected with friends and neighbors after the couple’s move north to Chestnut Place in Berlin in 2023. She lit up the room with her sense of humor, always noticed someone’s smile, and remembered everyone’s name.
Bonnie was preceded in death by her parents; stepmother, Florence Mae Hall Edwards (1972); and brother, John Edwards (2012).
Survivors include her husband, Lew Watters; daughters, Kate and Kelly Watters of Rimrock, Ariz., and Kara Watters Lake of Brookfield, Vt.; sons-in-law, Andy Lake and Mike Knapp; and six Lake grandchildren: William, Gurion, Samuel, Beatrice, Shiloh and Isaac.
Memorial donations may be sent to Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice in Barre or to a fundraiser by Wild Heart Farm to help create a healing garden in honor of mothers. A summer date for her celebration of life in Chester will be announced.
Arrangements are by Hooker Whitcomb Funeral Home, 7 Academy St., Barre.