Carole Sheppard, of Bayport, elementary school teacher, dies at 87

Sometimes it seemed as if Bayport’s Carole Sheppard was everything everywhere all at once. An elementary school teacher for 35 years in the Sachem school district, where she founded a gifted-and-talented program, the Newsday Volunteer Recognition winner was a president of the Bay Area Friends of the Fine Arts, co-chair of the annual parish fair at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church, active in the Sayville Yacht Club and the Sayville Village Improvement Society, and much more.

“Carole was a force,” said current BAFFA president Donna Smosky, of Coram. “If something needed to be done, you asked Carole and she was the force that got it done.”

Carole Sheppard died of natural causes on Aug. 2 at the Bellhaven Center for Rehabilitation & Nursing Care in Brookhaven. She was 87.

“Her sole drive was to help and to make other people happy and pleased and comfortable,” said her husband, Robert Sheppard. 

The couple, sailboat enthusiasts, joined the South Bay Cruising Club in 1972 “and I was on the board there in various positions all the way up to commodore for two years. She was my partner all the way through that — I called her the commodorable.”

Throughout the years, she and her husband and daughter would sail on their boat Arcadia as far afield as Marblehead, Massachusetts, and Coconut Grove, Florida.

The couple's daughter, Jennifer Sheppard-MacLean, of Sayville, said, “Both personally and professionally, she lived an extraordinary life.”

Carole Sheppard did so from a young age. Born Carol Joan Federici on July 29, 1937, in Worcester County, Massachusetts, one of two daughters of Italian immigrants, she graduated from Major Edwards High School in her hometown of West Boylston at age 16. During her four years there, she played varsity basketball and softball, worked on the school newspaper and yearbook and joined the chorus and theater groups.

Sometime around then, she became Carole. “A teacher said to her, ‘If you want to be distinctive in life, Carol, put an ‘e’ on the back of your name,’ ” explained her husband. “So she did, and carried that ever since.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in science education from Wheelock College in Boston, now part of Boston University, in 1959, she joined the Sachem school district that year. She also met her husband-to-be.

“I was down at the boatyard,” remembered Robert Sheppard, “and I met Carole's roommate from college and got to talking to her. There was four of them that had just graduated from Wheelock and were hired as schoolteachers, and they were living temporarily in a motel, looking for a house to rent. So,” he joked, “it's always peculiar to say, ‘I met my wife in a motel!’ ” They married in 1962.

Six years later, Carole Sheppard was one of the earliest members of BAFFA, which holds art exhibitions, concerts and other cultural events.

“One of my special memories of Carole was when I was conducting the Brookhaven Choral Festival at The Gateway and she was in the audience and came with flowers for me” as congratulations from BAFFA to a fellow Long Island arts group, said Martha Campanile, now BAFFA chorus director. “Carole was a gracious woman and that grace flowed through her in many ways.”

Carole Sheppard received a master’s degree in education from C.W. Post College, now LIU Post. After retiring from teaching, Sheppard became a licensed real estate salesperson with Douglas Elliman in Sayville through 2015.

In addition to her husband and daughter, Sheppard is survived by her son-in-law, Raymond MacLean, and a granddaughter. A sister, Diane Petipas, died before her.

A service was held Saturday at St. Ann's Episcopal Church in Sayville, where Carole Sheppard was married and served for a time on its vestry. 

Donations may be made to the Long Island Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association in Melville.