It is with sadness that the family of Clydene Richardson Trachier of Hartland announces her passing after 92nd birthday cakes (with ice cream!) have come and gone. Clydene departed her Lull Farm Lane home on the evening of May 14, 2025, while being cared for by family.
Clydene was born to Reba (Merrill) and Clyde Richardson on February 16, 1933, in the local doctor’s home on Main Street in Woodstock. She spent her childhood on the family’s small farm on Lull Farm Lane in Hartland. An only child, she played with neighbors from nearby Merritt Road, and the best winter fun included tobogganing all the way from there into the Three Corners village. She later became something of an older sister to her Richardson cousins who lived on Hartland Hill. After attending grades 1–8 at the Three Corners School (now the Hartland Recreation Center), she attended Windsor High School, where she excelled in business studies and music. She graduated third in the class of 1951.
Not long after Clydene met Roger Trachier on a double date (arranged by Roger’s cousin Marilyn Best), they were married at the First Congregational Church of Hartland (known as the Brick Church). Last Oct. 6, they celebrated their 68th anniversary. Clydene and Roger shared a varied and fulfilling life, playing outsized roles in their home community while living on the land where she had been raised.
Professionally, Clydene was a crack bookkeeper. She began working for Central Vermont Public Service while still in high school, and she was employed there for several years. Over time, she also kept the books for Davis Brothers garage in Windsor (where Rite Aid is now) as well as other businesses in the Upper Valley. Later, Clydene was Roger’s office-based business partner in the property management and construction businesses that they ran from their home. An unreconciled penny didn’t have a chance of escaping Clydene’s careful scrutiny.
Music was a golden thread woven throughout Clydene’s life. With musical talent received through both parents, young Clydene needed very few lessons to learn piano, and she became a valued component of the extended family’s occasional musical get-togethers. In high school, she played drums in the band because her rhythm was flawless. She sang in the girls’ chorus and auditioned her way into the Vermont All State Music Festival and the New England Music Festival all four years. As young women, she and three of her schoolmates formed a female vocal quartet — the Windsorettes — in the style of the then-popular Chordettes. The Windsorettes performed in concerts throughout New England — culminating as openers for the Chordettes, who later invited them onstage to perform along with them. With perfect pitch and a vocal range from soprano to baritone, Clydene went on to sing in many different settings and also played the piano, accordion, pipe organ, drums, saxophone, and guitar. For more than 25 years she was the choir director and pipe organist at Windsor’s Old South Church. She played drums for local concerts and often marched in Hartland’s annual Old Home Day parade with the Hartland Community Band. For many years she was the keyboardist in the big-band group that began as the Cogitators, later became the Moonlighters Big Band, and is still a regional favorite.
Clydene was the choir director of many community-based musical performances. In 1972, a few fellow Hartland PTA members suggested that she could help put together a fundraising talent show. She did, and the happy result, “Hometown Hoedown,” was the first of Hartland’s three decades of annual community variety shows, each with a different fun theme. The core of volunteers who produced the variety shows developed into Hartland Community Arts, and Clydene was not only a founding member of the group but also a co-director of many of its Christmas/Holiday concerts. More recently, she enjoyed directing the choir at the Hartland Brick Church. When Clydene was no longer able to leave her home, she deeply appreciated visits from members of the choir, especially the group known as “the three altos.” Through the years, Clydene amassed a copious collection of sheet music. Shortly before her death, she learned that her special dream — that her collection be used as a Hartland-based resource for shows and concerts by future talented singers and musicians — is already becoming reality.
Family was more important to Clydene than her work and musical activities. She was a mother of two, grandmother of two, and great-grandmother of three. When downhill skiing was a growing family sport in Vermont, Clydene enjoyed skiing with friends and her young family at the many local ski hills. A broken leg made her the first skier handled by the nascent volunteer ski patrol at the then-new Quechee Lakes ski area. The break was so complex that it put an end to her own athletic pursuits. Thereafter, she and Roger supported their children’s and grandchildren’s love of skiing and bicycling by attending competitions near and far and also by contributing to the formation and stability of Hartland Winter Trails.
Clydene and Roger were a civic-minded and Hartland-focused team. Together they helped with the campaign for a consolidated school; rescued the bells from the former Three Corners, Four Corners, and North Hartland schools and assured their permanent protection on display at the consolidated school; and worked with many others to support the creation of Aging in Hartland.
After owning a series of lakeside properties in Vermont and New Hampshire, Clydene and Roger found lasting contentment at their camp on Halls Lake in West Newbury, Vt. Her most cherished way to spend leisure time was soaking up sunshine and puttering on projects there. In the winter, she would enjoy a gentle cross-country ski on the lake ice before hunkering down next to the woodstove in the evening. During warmer weather, few things gave Clydene more joy than to share this happy place during picnic gatherings of family and friends.
Clydene’s life ended on the same dead-end rural road where she had lived her entire life — having left an indelible mark on the community and people around her.
Preceding Clydene in death were her mother Reba Marion Merrill Richardson; father Clyde Marshall Richardson; husband Roger P. Trachier; and Hartland first cousin James Richardson. She is survived by her son Gary Trachier (Ione) of Hartland; daughter Andrea “Andi” Ambros (Theodore) of Hartland; grandson Marshall Ambros (Megan) and their children Asher, Ingrid, and Gordon of Wisconsin; and granddaughter Alexandra “Alex” Ambros of Oregon; her first cousins Gordon Richardson (Pat) of Hartland, Betty Caterino (Bill) of Cornish, N.H., and Anita Richardson of Hanover, N.H.
At Clydene’s request, there will be no calling hours, funeral, or burial service, and her ashes will be scattered by family at a location she chose. An online guestbook is at cabotfh.com. All who knew Clydene or Roger are welcome to help celebrate their lives on July 12 at Damon Hall, 1 Quechee Road, Hartland, from 2-5 p.m. Shared remembrances in words and music will begin at 3 p.m.
Anyone wishing to make a donation in Clydene’s memory may consider Hartland Community Arts, Aging in Hartland, the First Congregational Church of Hartland, and the Visiting Nurse and Hospice (VNH) for Vermont and New Hampshire.
