Jeanne Duduit Obbard Thomson

Jeanne Duduit Obbard Thomson

January 28, 1935 – September 25, 2026

Jeanne “Jeannie” Duduit – which in the local Ohioan accent, everyone pronounced “Didway” – was born in Portsmouth, Scioto County, Ohio, to Harriet Boal Peebles and James Edward Duduit (Jim). Although she was an only child, she had 16 first cousins with whom she spent her formative years. Jeanne grew up in Portsmouth and a panoply of other cities – New York, Los Angeles, Montreal – since Jim’s work took them all over.

After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Jeanne received a Bachelor of Arts in history from Swarthmore College. She moved to New York with her college roommate, and worked for an insurance company while attending graduate classes in anthropology. In winter she came down with a bad flu, which sent her home to Indianapolis where her parents were living at the time. Once recovered, Jeanne took a job at the Indianapolis public library and through her parents’ social circle, met John Wyndham Obbard.

Jeanne and John married in 1959, and they spent their first year of marriage living on a lap-straked Norwegian sloop, first in Branford CT and then sailing up and down the East Coast. They then settled in Wallingford PA and had three daughters, Rachel Wyndham Obbard (1962), Harriet Duduit Obbard (1964), and Jeanne Fraser Obbard (1972).

After their daughter Harriet’s untimely death in 1974, Jeanne and John divorced, and Jeanne relocated to Northern Virginia. There she reconnected with and married John Allen Thomson (Jack), who she had known since their childhood in Portsmouth.

In their retirement years, Jeanne and Jack moved to Kill Devil Hills NC where they lived for 25 years on Colington Island. Jeanne joined many of the church choirs in the area, regardless of denomination; she sang alto (and sometimes tenor) with the Lutheran Church, the Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church, of which her family had long been members. She joined the DAR, as genealogy was a lifelong interest.

Jeanne loved being outside more than anything – the beach, the sound, gardening, or just sitting on the deck with a book. She made new friends easily and she and Jack met up with them in Outer Banks restaurants and the local senior center. Both Rachel and Jeanne Fraser enjoyed the years of retirement with Jeanne and Jack, with outings to Elizabethan Gardens, Mexican restaurants, seafood restaurants overlooking Albemarle Sound, boutiques, and every thrift store in a 30-mile radius.

After some years of widowhood, Jeanne relocated to the Philadelphia suburbs in 2022 to be closer to her daughters. She suffered a slow cognitive decline but still enjoyed her Diet Coke and chocolate ice cream, socializing with other retirees in the Hershey’s Mill community, shopping at TJ Maxx, and on one memorable day, watching the solar eclipse from her back lawn with Jeanne Fraser. Rachel visited often and all three spent time at Longwood Gardens, Chanticleer Garden, and the local antique shops. When Jeanne passed peacefully on September 25, 2026, she had already made new friends of her dedicated caregivers.

Jeanne is survived by her daughters Rachel Wyndham Obbard and Jeanne Fraser Obbard, her grandson Theodore Lyndon Obbard and granddaughter Drew Waterman Obbard. She was predeceased by her daughter Harriet Duduit Obbard, her grandson Hunter Livingston Carroll, and her husband Jack Thomson.

We will remember Jeanne for her love of growing things, her encyclopedic knowledge of plants, her stylish clothing sense, her china collection, her broad knowledge of literature and history, her dedication to Dick Francis novels, and the intelligence that never left her; she was still quoting Omar Khayyam in her last month. We will remember her unshakeable loyalty to her family, forged in those early years surrounded by Peebles and Duduit aunts, uncles, and cousins. We will remember her constant care of and support of us. Even when her health worsened, she was still asking what she could do to help us, although she was the one who needed the help most. She was a highly capable woman in an era when women were told to play second fiddle to men, and had an independent mind and quick sense of humor right to her last days. We remember our mother as someone who could sew and knit anything, pick up any artistic skill (photography, watercolor, pysanky), and who immediately charmed people her with her forthright, funny, and occasionally acerbic personality. We are grateful for her long life of 91 years, though it included some terrible griefs and challenges. We believe she has been welcomed home by Jack, her daughter Harriet, her grandson Hunter, her parents, grandparents, and her aunts, uncles, and cousins who travelled on before her.