Obituary: Frances Laird

Frances Laird—mother, grandmother, writer, Russian scholar, activist, gardener, and lover of

books, art, music, film, and the outdoors—died on June 8, 2025; her beloved husband of 60years, Campbell, was at her side.

Frannie was born in 1940 and grew up in the village of Stockbridge, Michigan, the second offour children of Harriet and Dr. Sidney Beckwith. She enjoyed the wild freedoms of a ruralchildhood with her sisters and brother—tramping through the woods and fields, riding horses,jumping from the hayloft, watching Westerns in the cinema on the village square—but hermother, whom everyone called Hatsy, also exposed them to art, music, ballet, and theater ontrips to the big city of Detroit. Studious and rather shy, Frannie graduated as salutatorian of herhigh school and ended up at the University of Michigan, where she completed her bachelor’sdegree in art history.

In 1963, she and her sister Margarette embarked on a grand tour of Europe, and it was on this trip that a family friend in Cambridge introduced Frannie to a charming young Scottish engineer.

As fate would have it, Campbell had already secured a job at Ford Motor Company and wassoon to move to Michigan. Their courtship continued by letter and later in person, and theymarried in June 1964.

Frannie and Campbell, who settled near Philadelphia, where Campbell worked as a professor atPenn, had three children: Kate, Drew, and Lucy. Frannie was a homemaker extraordinaire—shecooked excellent meals, baked her famous whole wheat bread weekly, sewed clothing, regularlygathered the kids to read them Dickens tomes and The Wind in the Willows, and otherwisecreatively balanced the demands of being a wife and a mother.

But she was never “just” a housewife. Frannie was always reading, always learning, alwayswriting. As the Cold War raged on in the 1980s, she became a peacenik. Her activism wouldculminate in the late summer of 1988 when she flew to Ukraine to participate in an epicmonthlong march from Odesa to Kyiv promoting nuclear disarmament. Soon she would get amaster’s degree in Russian language and literature from Bryn Mawr College, and she evenspent several weeks studying in Moscow just months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Her studies sparked a deep interest in the writer Anna Akhmatova. Frannie would make it herlife’s work to translate Akhmatova’s poetry as well as research and illuminate the life of thischronicler in verse of the Stalinist terror. She wrote three books about Akhmatova—SwanSongs, Waiting for the Muse, and the forthcoming Poem Without the Hero—that are brimmingwith her skillful translations.

Nature, music, and art were through lines of Frannie’s life. She and Campbell took their childrenon regular camping and hiking adventures, and eventually they built the family a log cabin in thePoconos, near the Lehigh River. There they could all escape the stultifying suburbs and hike,swim, build bonfires, take saunas, and simply sit on the porch to read and listen to the birdsong.

The cabin was Frannie’s happy place. Back at home in the burbs, she would relax by playingthe piano—her favorites were Chopin and Debussy—listening to opera and NPR, readingvoraciously, and lavishing attention on her Cavalier King Charles spaniels. Once all her childrenhad gone off to college and beyond, she put her art history degree to use as a volunteer docent,including sometimes leading tours in Russian, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

When Campbell eventually retired from teaching in 2005, the pair—known affectionately asFranCam—could think of no better place to relocate than Frannie’s childhood home inStockbridge. She created a garden full of veggies, fruits, and flowers and amassed a small filmarchive made up of hundreds of DVDs, while Campbell built himself a workshop where he couldtinker to his heart’s content. And they both dove into community life, including serving on thetown council and furthering the development of the farmers market. They also devoted muchtime and energy to the Michigan redistricting movement in the wake of the 2016 election.

FranCam’s respect for the wilderness led them to donate 30 acres of their wooded creeksideproperty to the Legacy Land Conservancy to create the Beckwith Preserve, and its trails formpart of the Stockbridge Community Pathways. Knowing that her family’s land would be bothprotected and shared with the community gave great comfort to Frannie in the final years of herlife as she battled several health setbacks and grieved the heartbreaking loss of her daughterKate in a horseback-riding accident in 2022.

Frannie is survived by her husband Campbell; son Drew (Polly) and granddaughters Bonnie andLaura; daughter Lucy (Alexander) and granddaughter Hildy; son-in-law Killian O’Connell andgrandchildren Rory, Julia, and Jane; sister Margarette Beckwith; brother Sidney Beckwith;sister-in-law Janet Spencer; and many dear cousins, nieces, nephews, and their families in theUS and UK.

A small graveside service will occur later in the summer (contact drulaird@gmail.com fordetails). Please consider making a donation in Frannie’s honor to Legacy Land Conservancy(legacylandconservancy.org), Razom for Ukraine (razomforukraine.org), or Ukrainian Action(ukrainianaction.com).