Caroline Dwight Bain

Caroline Dwight Bain, 92, longtime Cambridge resident, died Monday, January 5, in Exeter, NH.
The daughter of Henry Williams Dwight and Margaret Cooper Dwight, she was born in
Cambridge, where she spent her childhood and attended the Buckingham School. Her family
later moved to Stockbridge, Mass., when her father became president of the Housatonic National
Bank there. Known as Carol, she spent summers at her mother’s family compound, The Pines, on
Skaneateles Lake in New York. She graduated from the Baldwin School and received a bachelor’s
degree from Smith College in 1944. She worked for the Civil Aeronautics Board in Washington,
DC, the Red Cross in Boston, and later as box office manager for the Boston Symphony
Orchestra, including summers at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass. She married Sherwood E. (Joe)
Bain in 1949, lived briefly in Boston, and settled in Cambridge in 1950.
After raising three children, she served as a trustee and director of development at Buckingham
School. A lover of books, history, genealogy, music, and art, she enrolled in graduate school in
1973 at Tufts University and received a master’s degree in American history. For many years she
did archival consulting for families and organizations, including the Massachusetts Historical
Society and the Boston Symphony. She joined a committee charged with creating an archive from
papers saved in boxes in Symphony Hall’s basement and went onto to become an overseer of
the BSO and chairman of the BSO Archives Committee. She was also a member of the Mother’s
Club, Women’s Travel Club, Friends of the Smith College Libraries, and Ladies’ Dog Club, as well
as a proprietor of the Boston Athenaeum. She loved purebred dogs and raised and showed
schipperkes, two of them to championships.
She and her husband traveled extensively, visiting more than 75 countries, including seven trips
around the world. The highlight for Carol was a three-generation family trip to Culzean Castle in
Scotland in 2002 to celebrate her and Joe’s 80th birthdays. Summers were spent in Biddeford
Pool, Maine, where she got to enjoy her two grandsons, and more recently her two greatgrandchildren,
all of whom she was so proud of. She and Joe moved to RiverWoods in Exeter,
NH in 2009.
Carol is survived by her husband; two sons, George S. Bain of Syracuse, NY and Henry W.D. Bain
of Waltham; a daughter, Margie B. Huoppi, and her husband Richard of Pomfret Center, Conn.;
two grandsons, David A. Huoppi of Exeter, NH and Peter M. Huoppi and his wife Jennifer of
Waterford, Conn.; and two great-grandchildren, Mason and Anna Huoppi.
A memorial service will be held at a later date at Phillips Church at Phillips Exeter Academy. In
lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Boston Symphony, Norman Rockwell Museum in
Stockbridge, Mass., or Rockingham VNA & Hospice in Exeter.