Sally King Cramer, 91
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Sally King Cramer, 91, a longtime Williamstown resident, died Saturday, Jan 2, 2016, in Broken Arrow, Okla.
Born in Springfield in 1924, she was the fourth of eight children of Raymond and Olive Geran King. A member of the class of 1941 at Classical High School in Springfield, she graduated from Colby Junior College for Women in 1943.
A Navy veteran of World War II, she served with the WAVES from 1944 to 1946.
Mrs. Cramer had been a real estate agent for A.L. Perry Agency and later the Alton Westall Agency. After the war, she first returned to the advertising department of The Holyoke Transcript and later worked as advertising manager at McAustin & Wakelin Department Store in Holyoke, and in public relations at Bonwit Teller in New York.
In 1952, she married Robert P. Cramer, a native of Amherst. She was instrumental in his successful campaigns for state representative and senator representing Berkshire County, while raising four children. She also helped organize "teas" to support John F. Kennedy's bid for the U.S. Senate.
They moved to the Virgin Islands in 1961, when her husband was appointed president of the Virgin Islands Corp. by President Kennedy. They lived first on St. Thomas, where they added another daughter, and then on St Croix, where Mrs. Cramer was a partner in a Frederiksted gift store.
She became the deputy commissioner of commerce for the government of the Virgin Islands, promoting the islands as a tourist destination. She also worked at the Grapetree Bay Hotel and ran her own advertising agency, Panorama Promotions.
She returned to Williamstown in 1979, when she joined the Perry Agency.
She was a supporter of many causes and was an active volunteer at the Clark Art Institute, the David & Joyce Milne Public Library and the former Williamstown Board of Trade, for which she served a term as president. She was a member of the Garden Club, Faculty Club, Dart Club, Friends of the Library and the Northern Berkshire Duplicate Bridge Club.
Mrs. Cramer was a gregarious social animal who loved to entertain and had many friends, young and old. She loved reading, politics, Frank Sinatra, Teddy Roosevelt, Sudoku, cigarettes and Scotch floats. She had an adventurous, carefree manner. On a trip down the Amazon River she blithely jumped in the reportedly piranha-infested waters for a swim. On one occasion, she picked up her kids from the school bus stop driving a horse-drawn donkey cart – though no one before had ever seen her drive a cart or ride a horse.
She will be missed by all who knew her.
She leaves three sons, Robert Cramer and his wife, Fredreka Schouten, of Bethedsa, Md.; Peter Cramer and his partner, Jack Waters, of New York City and John Cramer and his wife, Dotty, of Santa Monica, Calif.; two daughters, Shawnee Baldwin of Glastonbury, Conn., and Shelley Persinger and her husband, Robert, of Broken Arrow, where she was at the time of her death; her youngest sister, Pinky Whelan of Los Altos, Calif.; eight grandchildren, Chris Baldwin, Natalie Johnson, Jack and Spencer Cramer, Neariah, Maia, Josiah, and Ben Persinger, and four great-grandchildren, Cam, Abby and Jill Baldwin, Ian Johnson and another on the way.
She was predeceased by her sisters Evelyn Leary, Nancy Swan, Lucy King, Joan Loveland, and her brothers, Russell and Ray King.
FUNERAL NOTICE — A memorial celebration for Mrs. Cramer will be held in the Berkshires later in the year.
Donations can be made to the Milne Library or to a charity of the donor's choice in her memory. Condolences can be mailed to Cramer, PO Box 20260, NY, NY 10009-8971 or to rcramer35@gmail.com.