Elizabeth Potter

A celebration of the life of Elizabeth (Pebble) Potter will be held on Saturday, July 18, at 3:30 p.m. at the Church of the Transfiguration. All are welcome.

Elizabeth Stone Potter passed away peacefully on Nov. 5, 2025. She had recently celebrated her 94th birthday. Her death was brought on by complications of Parkinson’s disease. She was much beloved by her sons David and Nick, her daughters-in-law Ellen

Bauerle and Lee Findlay Potter, her grandchildren Claire (Michael Schneider) and Natalie Potter and Arthur, Lila and Nina Potter, and most recently a great-grandson (Bennet Stone Potter-Schneider).

Pebble (a nick name afforded her as the first child in a family of Stones) cherished all her communities, especially those in New York City and Norfolk. She was born in northern Westchester County to Ralph and Betty Stone. After a childhood education in a one room schoolhouse in Waccabuc, she left home for northern Virginia and became a proud member of the Foxcroft School class of 1949. Graduating from Foxcroft she went to Wellesley College. There (or at least nearby) she met the dashing Idahoan with a sports car who would become her husband for nearly 60 years. She and Dave set up a home in New York after some time at Marine Corps camps and in Cambridge, Mass.

Education was the love of her professional life. She spent nearly 40 years teaching at Chapin School. She founded the audiovisual department at Chapin (even though she was perplexed by the family VCR machine), taught lower school science, led a home room for fourth graders and generally left as positive an imprint as she could on generations of talented young women. In the early ‘70s, Pebble’s friendship with Barbara Gridley led her to Norfolk. The house on Mountain Road became home, a refuge, but also a place of excitement and discovery. Norfolk was and is a place filled with what Pebble referred to as “all the best people.” She loved everyone, and we know that she missed dearly her social life with the Isabellas and all the friends in town and at the Norfolk Country Club. Though too many of those friends have already left, there are many still there and the family thanks you from the bottom of their hearts for the love you continued to show Pebble after she moved to Noble Horizons. Her last community at Noble Horizons was a gift. It would take too long to thank everyone there, but her family is deeply grateful for the care and love and tenderness shown Elizabeth—she finally lost that nickname when she got to Noble.