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| Rosamond Roberts Arthur Dean |
"From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required," said Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12.
Much was given to Rosamond Graham Roberts when she was born to Constance Lee Middleton and George Roberts on September 23, 1922, named for her father's sister Rosamond. She and her sister, Constance Middleton Roberts, were born in Brooklyn Hospital, Brooklyn, New York.
The family moved to a brownstone on East 79th Street in Manhattan but spent summers in East Hampton, Long Island, in a home called Furtherfield. There Rosamond and Constance swam in the ocean, played tennis, rode horses, and competed in equestrian events. Next door lived a little girl seven years younger, Jacqueline Bouvier, who also enjoyed these kinds of activities.
Like her mother and older sister, Rosamond attended Smith College, graduating during World War II with a BA in Economics. During college her sister and friends teased her for her ritzy taste, and she gained the nickname Rizz.
Her first job was with the Relocation Bureau, helping lower-income persons from Manhattan to find housing when they lost their homes as a new planned community was being built. She became an advocate for persons with housing problems for the rest of her life.
Rizz Roberts married a young Naval officer, Donald Arthur Jr., in Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in 1946. Born in 1914, he had attended Yale University and then served in both the Pacific and the Atlantic during World War II. He had a great sense of humor and worked as a CPA for Price Waterhouse, later becoming a stock broker for Clark, Dodge & Co., Inc. for many years.
They lived in Philadelphia briefly and then returned to New York, buying a home in 1952 in Cold Spring Harbor, built after a mansion in the style of The Great Gatsby had burned down some years earlier. They called it Eagle's Beak, keeping the name of the former mansion.
Rizz became active in several community organizations, primarily North Suffolk Planned Parenthood beginning in 1952. Later she co-founded Suffolk County Abortion Rights and then the Huntington Coalition for the Homeless. She was also a member of Old First Presbyterian Church in Huntington.
She served on the boards of Union Theological Seminary, Pitzer College in Claremont CA, the Quebec Labrador Foundation of Ipswich MA, and the Long Island Biological Association, which supports the work of the renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
She played tennis at the CSH Beach Club near their home, and her children attended the East Woods School in Oyster Bay. For many years she and Don maintained an apartment in Manhattan, where she was a member of the Cosmopolitan Club.
Rizz and Don Arthur had six children: John Mac Donald Arthur, b. August 13, 1947; Stuart Graham Arthur, Donald Richardson Arthur, Douglas Middleton Arthur, and twins James Roberts Arthur and Rosamond Lee Arthur, born in 1961.
Donald Arthur Jr. died of lung cancer in July, 1981. Ten years later Rizz married a family friend, William Tucker Dean, who had taught in the Columbia School of Law.
Rizz Dean continued to do volunteer work for Planned Parenthood and the Huntington Coalition for the Homeless until the end of her life, and she remained active in her support of Union Theological Seminary.
In July, 2016, she died of congestive heart failure, two months away from her 94th birthday. She is survived by her six children, thirteen grandchildren, and several step-children and grandchildren. She made a point of traveling to visit all of them, especially the twins born in 2002 to her daughter (Rosamond) Lee Arthur LaPlante in California.
She gave about $4,000 in political contributions during the last year of her life, many of them to Hillary for America, Act Blue, End Citizens United, and other Democratic causes.
For a fuller list of her achievements, see her obituary in Newsday or on legacy.com.
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