Laurel O'Donnell
1950 – 2023

It is with immeasurable sadness I must report that Laurel O'Donnell passed away suddenly on May 28, 2023.

Laurel was my wife, my love, my spirit and a kind and gentle soul. This website is just one example of her many talents, creativity, intelligence, and wit. When I met her in the 1990s, she was raising her son and teaching at Magnet Middle School for the Arts in Holyoke, Massachusetts, introducing countless students (and teachers) to computer technology in her Mac lab. She started developing for the Web at that time, creating, besides a charming vanity site, voluminous websites dedicated to the history and culture of Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden, and Hampshire counties, Western Massachusetts in general, and History Reading. Her title summed it up: "An Eclectic Collection of Historic and Genealogical Resources." She was a dedicated researcher and genealogist as well as a talented graphic artist and technician, all of which made these websites rich in information and beautiful to look at.

I have resurrected from the 1990s her vanity site "Laurel's Grot World" which documented a variety of esoteric items she had collected, with an engaging story behind each -- including her account of our first meeting.

I met her in 1995 and we spent 14 beautiful and exciting years together in Amherst, Massachusetts, New York City, and Brooklyn. In 2008 we moved to Penn Yan, in the Finger Lakes region of New York, for another 14 years, where we created La Belle Vie Bed & Breakfast. Her artistic taste and culinary talents and love of people made that endeavor a critical success.

Most recently, we were moving on, selling our Victorian home and positioning ourselves to return to her passions for genealogy and knitting and mine for music. (Laurel could knit, crochet, embroider or needle felt absolutely anything and produced amazing redwork quilts and three dimensional counterpanes, not to mention innumerable pairs of socks for me.) We were so looking forward to focusing on our professional hobbies and traveling to Scotland, Ireland, Paris . . . an endless list of plans and destinations.

I will do my best to keep her websites running and also resurrect those that have been on hiatus.

A celebration of Laurel's life will take place Saturday, September 30, 2023 in Holyoke, Massachusetts and at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. (See top of page for details.)

Rest In Peace, Laurel. I love you forever and ever.

Llewellyn Lafford
6/9/2023

Click this link for Laurel's vanity website from
1996-1999 in all its truly beautiful Web 1.0 glory!
 
While below is Laurel's ca. 2018 personal website,
spare and understated. . .and yet --
it comprises literally thousands of pages of information, history, books, maps, and pictures about Western Massachusetts that Laurel laboriously collected, scanned, OCRed, edited, and made palatable for us.
Her love of humanity and history powered her.
Her urge to educate and share was irrepressible.