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On Dec 7th, Reverend Vivienne Harmon Chapman passed peacefully at Evans Park, Newton Corner, Massachusetts. Born in Staten Island, the second child of Reverend Paul Harmon and Violette Lafferty Chapman, she is survived by four children: Caroline Guild, Todd Guild, Katherine Guild, Sylvia Guild Beaudoin; by her elder sister, Paulette Chapman Loomis; and by five grandchildren as well as nieces and nephews.
Vivienne attended Lexington High School and received a full scholarship to Wellesley College. There she met Sydney Theodore "Ted" Guild, Jr., and the two married the day after her graduation (They later divorced, in 1977). In 1954, they built a house in the community of Kendal Common, Weston.
Vivienne was a dedicated mother who had a fierce intellect and enjoyed theater, opera, dance, cooking, gardening, and sewing; was a pianist; trained singer; avid hiker (visiting all but four national parks). Her passion for botany, birds, and the ocean is evident in her photographs. She volunteered with the League of Women Voters, Friends of the Weston Library, the Boston Interracial Group, and Planned Parenthood.
She had a long career as a teacher, teaching in public and private high schools. She derived great satisfaction from teaching English to first-generation immigrant women at the College of DuPage in Illinois.
Always active in the Unitarian Universalist Church, often as Director of Religious Education, Vivienne joined an increasing number of women who sought ordination in the 1980s; after serving as Ministerial Intern in Toledo, she was ordained as a minister in Lubbock, Texas. She returned to Massachusetts as Interim and Visiting Minister at Barnstable and Chatham. Aged 86, she preached, on Easter Sunday, in Greenfield where her father had served. In 2008, she retired to South Yarmouth, Massachusetts; and in 2015, moved to Evans Park at Newton Corner.
The service has yet to be scheduled due to Covid and the Omicron variant. When the information is known, it will be posted in the online obituary maintained by the funeral home, which is able to ne found if you "Google" Vivienne Chapman and "obituary".
Memorials in her name may be made to Faith & Family Hospice Foundation, 420 Lakeside Ave., Suite 203A, Marlborough, MA. 01752. Notes of condolences can be sent to the family care of Sylvia Guild Beaudoin, 4 Kendal Common Rd., Weston, MA. 02493-2160
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