PAXTON — Among her favorite hobbies, Ann Sefton enjoyed growing flowers.
Some of those flowers won prizes.
“She won prizes at the Spencer Fair. And she grew both vegetables and flowers, but it seems that flowers were her preferred gardening focus,” Sefton’s daughter-in-law, Laura Sefton, said after the family helped Ann celebrate her 95th birthday in June.
People in Paxton may have run into Ann at the library or talked to her at the Paxton dispatch in her working years.
“In her library work, she really liked mentoring the work-study students who worked (there),” Laura said.
Ann Sefton turned 95 on June 21. She lived in Paxton (in the Greek Revival-style house across the street from the town library on Richards Ave) from 1974 to the mid-2000s, before moving to assisted living.
Her children, Melissa Wolf, Michael, Kerry True, and Jay (William J Sefton IV), her seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren wished her well on this special celebration.
“We each visited her to celebrate in our own way,” Laura said of celebrating the milestone.
Ann and her husband, William J “Jack” Sefton III, had their four children prior to moving to Paxton. All four attended Paxton Center School and/or Wachusett Regional High School. Jack died in the mid-1980s.
Ann spent many years as a librarian at Anna Maria College and then Clark University; she finished working at Clark when she was in her 80s, Laura said.
Ann also worked as a full-time Paxton police/fire dispatcher in the early 1980s, under Chief Bob Sheehan.
Laura said Michael told her a story about a time when he was working as a police officer in Paxton.
“She was dispatching on a day that Michael had a high speed chase after a motorcycle into Rutland. The male driving the motorcycle was arrested, and the pregnant passenger was transported to Holden Hospital to deliver her baby (though they didn’t deliver babies there so she was moved to Memorial Hospital),” she said.
“She loved gardening and haunted Pleasant View Nursery (now Sterling Greenery Too) for additions to her landscape. She also loved to submit her vegetables and quilts for judging and won many prizes.”
Ann Sefton “was an avid book reader and spent many hours at Richards Memorial Library looking for books,” Laura said.
