Carolyn Hawley Downing, age 91, of Southbury, died on February 6, 2019. She was a resident of Pomperaug Woods.

Carolyn was born to Howard and Eleanor Hawley on October 27, 1927. She grew up in Nahant, Mass., and graduated from Lynn English High School and Feiner’s Secretarial School in Boston. She worked as a secretary in the admissions office at MIT in Cambridge when she met and married William DeBost Downing on September 17, 1949.

They moved to Newtown in 1964. They lived in Newtown, where they raised their children, for 41 years. Carolyn was active in community affairs. She was a Justice of the Peace for 32 years and wrote an occasional column for The Newtown Bee. Carolyn moved to Southbury in 2005.

Carolyn was a founding and lifelong member of the Spay and Neuter Association of Newtown (SNAN), a member of Church of the Epiphany in Southbury, and a volunteer at The Upper Room Thrift Shop.

Carolyn was preceded in death by her beloved husband, Bill, who died in 2007, and by her parents and her sisters, Patricia and Lois.

She leaves her brother, Richard Hawley; two children, Katherine (John) Jackman of Ames, Iowa, and William (Heather) Downing of Reading, Mass.; as well as seven grandchildren, Nathan Jackman, Brenda Jackman Thompson, Laura Jackman, Philip Jackman, Natalie Jackman, Andrew Downing, and William Downing; and seven great-grandchildren.

Her ashes will be interred in the Memorial Wall of St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookfield. A memorial service will be held in the spring at Church of the Epiphany at a date to be decided.

Gifts in her memory may be donated to the flower fund at The Church of the Epiphany in Southbury.