Fairlie Fund
I am starting this fundraising campaign as we approach the 100th birthday of my extraordinary aunt, Fairlie Nicodemus on January 2, 2020. She has amazed us all by reaching this milestone in remarkably good health and an undiminished passion for life.She has always been proud of the fact that she was born in the year that women finally got the right to vote and she has been fiercely independent all her life. The only negative in her situation is that, unfortunately, she has outlived her financial resources. 
Fairlie with her family at Ships' Hole Farm in the early 1940s (3rd from left)
Fairlie was raised on a small family farm on Long Island with two older sisters and a younger brother who eventually inherited the property and raised his family there. When she was three years old, she tragically lost her twin brother and has struggled all her life to come to grips with his death and also the obstacles of class, gender, an inconsistent education and disconnected parenting. Her two sisters made good matches as was expected of genteel women in the 1930s, but Fairlie struck out on her own, working for Newsweek and then the Red Cross during the war and then getting a Master's Degree in Social Work from Smith College. During the rest of her professional life, she worked as a highly regarded and successful psychotherapist. Having a predominantly rural practice, however, she always billed on a sliding scale, helping her many lower income patients, and although she worked until her mid 80s, she did not plan financially for her remarkably long life. She was a regular donor to a myriad of environmental, animal rights and humanitarian causes. She was an avid outdoors woman, a gardener, a hiker, a swimmer and beach walker, a birder and a champion of the needy and disadvantaged. Hers has been a life devoted to helping, and now finally, it is she who needs help.
A girl with her dog
Playing the role of the young captain in a high school production (2nd from left)
At age 20
The young therapist
In her 80s Fairlie taught herself word processing and wrote a memoir entitled, "My Story was Listening: Recollections of a Retired Psychotherapist". In this lovely book she artfully and lyrically interweaves themes of love, loss, personal relationships, sexual confusion, love of place and the development pf her professional skills against the backdrop of her therapeutic work over a career spanning more than a half century.
Fairlie is currently living in a lovely rented farmhouse in upstate New York with an old rescue tabby, four house finches and a small tank of tropical fish. Outdoors she has multiple bird (and squirrel and chipmunk) feeders which she can watch for hours. Three wonderful caregivers have been helping her out with limited hours, which might understandably need to expand. She has a baby grand piano, a gift from the children of one of her dearest departed friends, that she still plays. She loves to sit on her blue sofa and read magazines, poetry and novels, as well as work on a collection of personal essays.
I would like very much for Fairlie to live out the rest of her life in this idyllic spot. It would break my heart to have to move her to a senior medicaid facility or a group home. I and my family have been contributing as much as we can, but we are falling short.Any donation to her care and living expenses would be most appreciated.
Glensfoot Farm - the view from her kitchen window 
As a bonus, if you donate $100 or more and would like to receive a copy of Fairlie's book which I published in 2014 using CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon, I will ship it to you at my expense. Just let me know where to send it. I know you will find it fascinating. While it describes an era and many events that are long past, Fairlie's vivid descriptions of the unique inner struggles every therapist faces as he or she learns and then masters the art and craft of psychotherapy are timely, powerful and relevant to modern audiences, including therapists, patients and onlookers alike.
If you would like to order a copy of Fairlie's book yourself, the Amazon link is
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Was-Listening-Recollections-Psychotherapist/dp/1497353130/ref