Anne Forbes, of Groton, MA passed away peacefully on Thursday, September 6, 2018 at the age of 99.
Anne attended Shady Hill Grade School in Cambridge MA followed by the Windsor School in Boston. She graduated from Bennington College in 1941 and earned a master’s degree in Social Anthropology in 1948 from Radcliff. Anne did research in American Indian art in New Mexico and developed a lifelong interest Native American people and art and became close friends to a number of artists during this period. It was also during this time, that she started a collection of paintings by American Indians which she donated to the Smithsonian Collection of American Art in 2005.
As part of the war effort, Anne went to secretarial school and worked in Washington DC as a secretary for several years. Shortly after the war, she became director of Fellowship House in Kansas City, an organization committed to religious and ethnic tolerance. In 1953, Anne returned home to Cambridge MA where she worked for the International Students Center until 1957.
In 1958, at the suggestion of her mother, Anne became interested the spiritual teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. She joined Self Realization Fellowship and began lifelong service to the organization. She helped to revive the Boston Meditation Group and hosted retreats at her summer home on Nashawena Island. In 1970, Anne moved to Shaftsbury Vermont and opened a retreat where SRF members as well as those interested in the teachings of Yogananda could come to meditate and learn.
Over the years, Anne worked hard to create and maintain a peaceful and beautiful environment conducive to meditation and spiritual pursuit. She hosted twenty-eight monastic-led retreats and many, many individual, small group, and work retreats. During those years all retreatants stayed in the house. All food was prepared on site with the help of local volunteers. Most of the vegetables were grown in the prolific Retreat garden.
Anne also started the Shaftsbury Meditation Circle which continues to meet at the Retreat.
In the early 1980’s, SRF asked Anne to go to Front Royal, Virginia to help establish the Greenfield Retreat. She stayed there several years before returning to her beloved Shaftsbury.
Anne retired from the retreat in 2005 and moved to Groton Ma., where she lived with her nephew and family until her passing.
She is succeeded by four nieces and a nephew, by their respective offspring and is embraced by her spiritual family in Self Realization Fellowship.