Constance Louisa Tree, 84, of Boston, died
May 20.
Raised in Milton, she graduated in 1945 from Simmons College, where she was class president, and attended The Boston Museum School of Art. She served in the W.A.V.E.S. Naval Reserves from 1944-1946 with two of her sisters.
Miss Tree was widely recognized for her career in graphic arts, culminating with her appointment as the first woman vice president of Xerox Corp. (formerly Ginn & Co).
In 1975, she received the Simmons College Honors Convocation Citation and in 1987, The Bookbuilders of Boston’s W.A. Dwiggins Award. She served as a trustee of Regis College in Weston for 12 years and was a lecturer at Boston College on graphic arts and publishing. A gifted watercolor painter and gardener, she was a member of The Museum of Fine Arts, The Boston Athenaeum, The Society of Printers in Boston and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Profiled in the Simmons College Alumnae Magazine, she was described as a “charming blonde artist-turned businesswoman who seems to have an inherent knack for getting in on the ground floor of everything new.” Simmons went on to conclude, “Seventy-five years after John Simmons verbalized his ideas for women, Ms. Tree, has, in many ways, epitomized his dream.”
Daughter of the late Mary Agatha (Heaney) and Frederic J. Tree, she is survived by her sisters, Elizabeth Anne Tanner, of Needham, and Eleanor O’Callaghan, of Boston; her nieces and nephews, Frederic T. Tanner, of Los Angeles, Mary-Laura Greely, of Wellesley Hills, Carol Marshall, of Hingham and Dr. Tobey MacDonald, of Washington, D.C.
She was the sister of the late Mary Isabel MacDonald (Marion), of Milton, and aunt of the late Paula Anne Soyster and Mary Beth Yasi.
A Mass of Christian burial was celebrated in St. Agatha Church on May 22. Burial was in Milton Cemetery.
Donations may be made to Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115; or The Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115.
Arrangements were by the Dolan Funeral Home.