By Bill Heater

Most anyone who knew Prentiss Shillingford became her friend. She had panache. She made you feel better about yourself for having known her. Prentiss was larger than life.

Sadly, for all who knew her, that life was much too short. She fought colon cancer for two-and-a-half years. After a long, difficult struggle, Prentiss died on Nov. 23, in her home, surrounded by her family. She was 67.

Words hardly describe who Prentiss was. Colors might do a better job of it. Or music. The peonies that grew in her garden might. The bright yellow jacket she wore to the Milton Hoosic Club only weeks before she died said a great deal about her. There’s probably a Gilbert and Sullivan song lyric that describes her perfectly – she sang them with gusto whenever she could find a willing chorus.

As her daughter Amelia said, “People talked about my mom with words often attributed to women of a different era; she would have been a great flapper. Prentiss was a woman who took risks. She had style. She made things fun.”

Prentiss was born in New York City, the only child of horseman/raconteur Reginald Truefitt Johnson, an Englishman, and Barbara Greenough Johnson, a Bostonian. She was raised for a brief time in Washington, D.C. and attended the Potomac School in Virginia. She spent her high school years boarding at Milton Academy, living close to her grandmother, Amelia, her mother and her aunt, Ellen: all Milton residents.

And here in Milton she stayed for the most part – a vital member of the community; successful businesswoman; manager of two prominent South Shore real-estate offices; president of the Milton Garden Club; chair of the venerable Milton Academy fund-raiser, Swap-It; member of St.Michael’s Episcopal Church; an excellent bridge player; a voracious reader and writer; an avid gardener – but most importantly, a mother and a wife.

Prentiss and Jack, her husband of 33 years, raised two children, Amelia and Harry, in a small home not far from the one where she grew up. Amelia is a graduate of Yale University and the Yale Graduate School of Nursing. Harry, a graduate of Denison University, lives now in Manhattan where he works for the firm Lazard Capital Markets.

Prentiss worked as an assistant director at The Aloha Camps in Fairlee, Vt., where she spent many years as a young camper and sent her children. Prentiss hoped to provide other young girls with the character molding, adventurous “outdoorsy summer” experience that she and her children so loved.