Elizabeth Bergen Brophy
Elizabeth Bergen Brophy of Southampton died of liver cancer at the Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Southampton on Wednesday, May 11. She was 82.
Ms. Brophy graduated from Smith College in 1951, and during her senior year in Paris studying at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques, she married James D. Brophy, a 1949 graduate of Amherst College who was a Fulbright Scholar also studying in France.
Returning home to where her husband taught at Iona College in New Rochelle, the couple raised five children, Sheila, David, Kate, Elizabeth C., and James M. She later earned a Master of Arts degree at Sarah Lawrence College. After earning a Ph.D. from Columbia University, she began teaching English at the College of New Rochelle, where she taught for 25 years and became chair of the English department and a full professor.
During her teaching career, she published a study of 18th-century English women and two critical studies of the 18th-century novelist Samuel Richardson. She was the recipient of a number of scholarly grants, including a Fulbright Fellowship, a Columbia Traveling Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Award, and an American Council of Learned Societies Grant. In her career, she and her husband spent four sabbatical years studying in London.
Upon their joint retirement in 1992, Ms. Brophy and her husband became year-round residents of their home in Shinnecock Hills. She enjoyed volunteering for a number of years as a cook for Human Resources of the Hamptons’s Monday senior lunches.
Ms. Brophy’s ties to Southampton were extensive. Her parents, James and Marie Bergen, built their home in Shinnecock Hills in 1954, where they lived until their deaths in 1968. Her daughter Sheila married a Southampton resident and they have a home on Hildreth Street.
In addition to her husband and children, she is also survived by six grandchildren, Christopher, Siobhan, Prudence, and Caleb Peiffer, and Sarah and Matthew Brophy; a great-grandson, Angus Peiffer; three daughters-in-law, David’s wife, Maria Modugno, James’s wife, Susan McKenna and Christopher’s wife Amanda; and two sons-in-law, Sheila’s husband, Reverend Steven Peiffer and Siobhan’s husband, Brian Phillips.
In a terrible coincidence, a son, David, who was also battling cancer, died several hours after his mother on May 11 in Manhattan.
Visitation was held Friday, May 13, at Brockett Funeral Home in Southampton. A funeral Mass was held at Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Church in Southampton on Saturday, May 14.
Memorial donations may be made to Human Resources of the Hamptons, 168 Hill Street, Southampton, NY 11968.
on May 16, 2011