Winifred “Winky” Clarke Stearns Hussey ’82

Winifred “Winky” Clarke Stearns Hussey ’82 passed unexpectedly due to cardiac arrest on October 9, 2023, while biking with friends in the Lake Bled area of Slovenia. At Dartmouth she became the third generation of Stearns to take it by storm. Winky ran the winter sports program, produced her finest academic work with a rigorous and original research paper on Sherman Adams, and graduated magna cum laude with a major in education. In her post-college years, Winky taught first grade for two years in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Her teaching then and through her life was both formidable and so much fun. Ahead of her time, she taught kids where they were at, bridging from her deep intuition of their imaginative worlds to the worlds of knowledge she had to share. At 24, Winky took a job at the French-American school in San Francisco. She spent a vibrant two years there thriving as a teacher and reconnecting with husband-to-be Peter Kilpatrick Hussey. The couple briefly moved back to the East Coast for Peter’s M.B.A. at Harvard before returning west to Seattle. Winky threw herself into motherhood, raising her three children with the same discipline and magic she’d brought to her students, and taking them on countless wonderful trips to her childhood haunts, on the road in the US, and abroad. Winky is survived by brother Tony; husband Peter; children Luke, Duncan, and Winifred “Clarkie”; and grandsons Ames, Cameron, and Riley. She is predeceased by her parents and brother Mikey.