Cynthia A. Dougherty of Quogue and formerly of Manhattan died on March 29 at her home under the care of East End Hospice and Leila Demurishvili, less than two months shy of her 90th birthday.
Born Cynthia Abbott on May 19, 1920, in Providence, Rhode Island, she was raised from infancy in Schenectady, New York, by her stepmother, Albertina, after her natural mother died in childbirth. She graduated from the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, in 1938, and went on to earn her bachelor’s degree from Sweet Briar College in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1942.
Shortly after her graduation, in June of 1942 she married Stephen B. Botsford, the stepson of the founder of The New Yorker magazine, Raoul Fleischmann. Mr. Botsford worked at The New Yorker, serving for a period as the president and publisher of the magazine, and the couple raised three children in Manhattan and Quogue.
After that marriage ended in divorce, in 1966 she married Richard Dougherty, a writer, novelist, playwright and longtime journalist who worked for the Herald Tribune and later served as the first New York bureau chief for The Los Angeles Times. Mr. Dougherty, who died in 1986, was at one time a New York City deputy police commissioner, the press secretary for George McGovern’s presidential campaign, and vice-president for public affairs for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. His book on the McGovern campaign, “Goodbye, Mr. Christian,” was dedicated to his wife.
She first came to Quogue with her infant son Peter in the summer of 1945, while her husband was serving in the Pacific. She rented a cottage next door to the U.S. Coast Guard station on Dune Road, which was then in active service.
After his discharge from the military, Mr. Botsford bought a house that had been an annex to the Post House, a guest house on the corner of Club Lane and Quogue Street, and moved it west to the corner of Ocean Avenue and Quogue Street.
Prior to the couple’s divorce, Mr. Botsford bought a second house as a rental property on Quantuck Lane, and Mrs. Dougherty later summered there with her second husband, continuing as a part-time resident after his death before moving full-time to Quogue in 2006.
During World War II, she worked as a certified nurse’s aide in hospitals in New York City and Ogden, Utah. Her volunteer work included raising funds for the Boy Scouts and also for the United Hospital Fund as a member of the Women’s Committee of the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital. She initiated and ran a series of theater benefits for the Sweet Briar College Alumnae Club and served as a regional representative on the college’s alumnae council.
From 1952 to 1970, she was a member of the board of managers of The Rehearsal Club in New York, an organization that provided low cost food and shelter to aspiring actresses. During her tenure on the board, she served as secretary, vice president and, at times, as acting directress.
Other interests and affiliations included the Foreign Policy Association’s Off the Record luncheons, the Drama League, and the English Speaking Union, where she worked with the “English in Action” pool. She was a member of The River Club and the Cosmopolitan Club in New York, and the Quogue Beach Club and Quogue Field Club, where she earned acclaim for singing in a succession of productions of the Quogue Quips.
An avid reader and theatergoer, she enjoyed both intelligent discourse and quick wit in literature as well as conversation, survivors said, and she loved to dance.
She is survived by a daughter, Katharine and her husband Bruce Peiffer of Quogue; two sons, Peter Botsford and his wife Toni Oppenheimer of Remsenburg and Andrew Botsford of Quogue; four grandchildren, Blake Botsford, Jane Johnson, Logan Kingston and Veronica Botsford; a step-grandson, Joshua Quinn; three great-grandchildren, Grace, Blake and Whit Johnson; three nieces, Susan Workum, Margot Botsford and Ruth Fleischmann; and one nephew, Jamie Fleischmann.
A family memorial service and interment of ashes in the Quogue Cemetery next to her husband, Richard Dougherty, will be scheduled in July. In lieu of flowers, donations to East End Hospice would be appreciated by the family.
on Apr 7, 2010