Margie DeVane died at home overnight on July 14. Her death followed a sharp decline over the past six months due to interstitial lung disease. She was 93. Many friends and family members were able to visit in the last months and weeks of her life.

Margie was the personification of her mother’s rule: leave it better than you found it. She put her full energy and notable enthusiasm into everything she did whether running a household, parenting or gardening, among her many interests.

She grew up in Hartford, Conn. with her parents Berkeley and Margaret Cox (Depression-era transplants from Virginia, which in their hearts they never fully left) and her siblings Kate, Berkeley, John Stuart and her twin, Isabelle.

After Havergal College in Toronto, she attended Sweet Briar College and then Goucher College, spending her junior year at St. Andrews, during which she met lifelong friends. She took people into her embrace all her life, enthusiastically sharing her many interests and passions, and once in she never let them go.

Following introductions engineered by her brother-in-law, Jim English, Margie married Jim’s close friend Milton DeVane, and her sister Kate married another of Jim’s close friends, and of course Jim married her twin Isabelle.

Margie moved to New Haven to join Milton as he finished law school. They lived for decades on Edgehill Terrace where they raised their children and where Margie lived until she moved to Cheshire to live with her daughter Nell in 2020.

She set about making the Edgehill Terrace neighborhood a home for everyone. Her kitchen was a beehive of activity where make-your-own pizza parties, Easter egg hunts, tree trimming parties, neighborhood treasure hunts and other comings and goings were regular occasions. She dove into supporting the Foote School where all her children went (and before them her husband and later her grandson). She was a main force behind the restoration of Edgerton Park and the mastermind behind Sunday in the Park and the Greenbriar program. She made sure that the park was not just part of the life of the neighborhood but that it was shared with everyone in adjacent neighborhoods.

No one was ever left out of Margie’s endeavors. After successfully launching her own children, she made it her business to care for many children in the neighborhood. There was a constant flow through that big light-filled kitchen, sometimes to the surprise of her own children who would come home from college to find a new batch of lucky participants sitting around the orange Formica table.

She was a force behind the Whitney Museum and all their educational efforts. When her grandchildren arrived, she had laid the stage for a beautiful and intriguing world which they all enjoyed. The playroom continued to have multiple globes, moon globes and hundreds of plants that — to the chagrin of many helpers — came in and went out with the seasons.

What she most excelled at was making other people feel loved and successful themselves. This was most clear in the last months and weeks of her life when she received so many visitors, calls and letters from people who she had valued and made to feel valuable. She truly left it better than she found it.

She is predeceased by her loving husband Milton, her twin sister Isabelle and Isabelle’s husband Jim, her brothers Berkeley and John Stuart Cox, among other loved ones.

She is survived by her children and their families: Nell DeVane of Cheshire, her son Nicholas Lima of Seattle, Nick’s father David Lima, Kate DeVane and Mark Bernard and their children Maggie and Mark Berkeley Bernard, all of West Tisbury, and Will DeVane and his children Holly and Alice DeVane of Dallas, Tex.

She is also survived by her twin Isabelle’s children who she considered her own: Jim English, Bill English and Maggie Unsworth and their much loved families.

She leaves a legacy of so many friendships, relationships and adopted family members, a number too large to count.

In lieu of flowers donations may be made to: Island Autism, 515 Lambert’s Cove Road, PO Box 216, West Tisbury Ma 02575, Islandautism.org or Edgerton Park Conservancy, P.O. Box 6163, Hamden, CT 06517, [email protected].