1937 – 2016

LEWISTON — On the evening of Saturday, Jan. 23, Georgette Anita Derosby died peacefully in her home in Lewiston following a prolonged fight with cancer. Georgette was 78 years old.

Georgette was born in Lewiston on May 13, 1937. She was one of eight children of Irene and Ovila Lessard.

Georgette’s father died when she was young. The eight children were raised by her mother, Irene, in a small wood-frame house on Jeffrey Street in Lewiston. Georgette attended grade school at Holy Cross in Lewiston and high school at Marie Joseph Academy in Biddeford. She worked for many years as a floral designer in Auburn and Lewiston.

While in her last year at Marie Joseph Academy, she was introduced to Donald Derosby. He would never be the same. The couple married in Lewiston in 1957 and remained married for 58 years.

Georgette and Donald had five children and nine grandchildren. Each was a source of enormous pride and self-proclaimed boasting rights. Mother’s Day and Georgette’s birthday often fell on the same day. This was no coincidence.

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Georgette and home were synonymous. She made people feel like the best version of themselves. She had a way of making people feel at ease, seen and loved. She listened. She was in the business of creating beauty. She was a collector. She graced every space she touched with centerpieces of freshly cut flowers, baskets of home-grown produce and collections of pottery, stones, shells and glass punctuated with pictures of her family everywhere.

Happiest at sunrise sitting in her living room watching the sun come across her big picture window, Georgette would chart her plans for the day. Inevitably, and much to her husband’s chagrin, most of her well-laid plans would be disrupted by time spent in her garden. A plan for just 15 minutes of garden time would quickly turn into three hours and she would always remark on having no idea where the time went. Set one foot into her backyard and the mystery was solved. Shocking purple irises, brown-eyed Susans, giant blueberries, little fountains and rows of vegetables. Her passion. She was the consummate tour guide leading you through her “little kitchen garden” where she never took credit for the radiant blooms. “Well, aren’t they showing off for you today,” she would say.

Georgette was deeply spiritual and had an infinite capacity for love and service. She had the strongest connection with her own siblings who, molded by their mother Irene, all possess great faith and strength. These qualities Georgie radiated and it was impossible to be with her and not feel them. Those of us she touched are reeling with a case of home-sickness. She is at peace now, however, in a place where there are no limits of time to interrupt her gardening. She is home.

Georgette is survived by her five children and their partners, Tony Derosby and Janice L. Moore, Pat and Robert Gagne, Don Derosby, Lisa and David Jones, and Jennifer Derosby and Kimberly Fronapfel; her grandchildren, Cory Beth and John Monnens, Gordon Jones, Evan Derosby, Cole Derosby, Monica Gagne, Sophie Claus, Iris Jones, Leo Derosby and Adelaide Derosby-Fronapfel; her brothers and sisters, Cecile Belanger, Muriel Bernier, Dan and Jeannine Vachon, Connie Lessard, Del Lessard, Sr. Claire Lessard, Ray and Yolande Lessard, and Pauline Girard; and her dear friends, Roland Metayer and Claire Breton, Robert and Joan Dehetre, Lisa and Dan Tanguay, and Larry and Jay Roy.


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