Honoré Hager, known to her many friends as “Honey,” passed away at home in Woodstock, as a gentle snow fell on the evening of Feb. 20. Death followed a lengthy battle with kidney disease. She was 87 years of age.
Known for her sparkling personality and spontaneous wit, she loved literature, cooking, entertaining, and good conversation. She harbored strong opinions and a “no-nonsense” approach to everyday life. She took great pride in her ethnic roots, having been raised by an Italian-American mother and an Irish-American father in the city of Rutland, Vt., steeped in the traditions of both cultures.
As the wife of a television journalist, she readily embraced the rigors of moving around the country and the world, providing family stability and nurturing three daughters while her husband’s profession often called him away for long periods covering breaking news. But no matter where she lived, she always considered Vermont “home.” She delighted in reminding her husband that his beginnings had been from “away,” having moved to Woodstock as an eighth grade schoolboy, whereas she had been born in Rutland — a true native.
She was justifiably proud of those three daughters whom she encouraged to seek interesting and meaningful careers, resulting in one lawyer, one fashion-industry executive, and one television reporter turned public relations executive.
She was born in 1938, graduated from Rutland’s Mount St. Joseph Academy in 1956, and attended Castleton College (now Vermont State University).
She met her husband on a blind date, 68 years ago, when the two were still in college and while he was a summertime disc jockey at a radio station in Rutland. They married a year later, after which she went to work to help her husband through his senior year at Dartmouth, where the couple lived in married students’ quarters.
Following college, the couple moved to North Carolina where, in the racially-segregated South of the 1960s, she worked tirelessly in a program to help Black grade-schoolers prepare for unfamiliar and challenging surroundings in newly integrated schools. Later, in Washington, D.C., she volunteered for years at a soup kitchen and clothes closet for the poor and homeless.
Beginning in childhood years when, to her delight, she discovered the Rutland Library, and stretching to retirement in Woodstock and long hours reading on the back porch, she had a lifelong love affair with literature — fiction, non-fiction, emotional, technical — she loved and devoured a huge variety of books and delighted in discovering a new or unexpected idea or an artfully turned phrase. She was active in Woodstock’s historic New Century Club, which fosters research and writing.
Honoré Vargas Hager is survived by her husband Robert; her daughters Gabrielle of Greenwich, Conn., Jennifer of Upper Montclair, N.J., and Christina of Granby, Mass.; sons-in-law John Nossiff, Jim Henegan, and Gary DeAngelo; grandchildren Aaron, Peter, and Johnny Nossiff, Bobby and Lilly Dukich, Patrick Henegan, and Brady and Derek DeAngelo, and a new great-granddaughter Yumin.
Arrangements are by Cabot Funeral Home. In accordance with Honoré’s wishes, no memorial gathering is planned. Gifts in her memory may be made to a favorite place of her youth, the historic Rutland Free Library (currently under great financial pressure), 10 Court Street, Rutland, VT 05701.
