Diane Mirick Obituary

Diane K. (Lohman) Mirick, 78, a long-time resident of Worcester and then Princeton, died on August 24, 2025, after a sudden illness. Diane was the “New Year’s Baby” of Fountain Hill, Pennsylvania in 1947. She grew up in Glens Falls, New York and Waterville, Maine. She entered Mount Holyoke College in 1964. On a blind date that October, she met her future husband John Mirick, who was a freshman at Amherst College. That began their 61-year relationship. After they graduated in 1968, Diane went to the University of Brussels on a Rotary International scholarship while John earned a master’s degree at the University of London on a Fulbright fellowship. They married in August 1969 when they came back to the United States.

Diane worked at New England Life while John attended Harvard Law School. They lived in Cambridge and then Newton Corner, moving to Worcester in 1976 with their children, Christopher and Seth. After several years, Diane became the Director of Religious Education at the First Unitarian Church in Worcester. She took great pride in helping children in the Church grow up to become adults and welcoming them back at Christmas Eve services. When the Church needed substantial renovations after the fire, a classroom was named in her honor. She retired after twenty-five years.

Family was important to Diane. She was very proud of the accomplishments and careers of her sons Chris and Seth, and their wives Catherine and Rebecca, and was eagerly following the educations and accomplishments of her grandchildren.

Traditions were also important to Diane. Even before she and John moved to Princeton in 2004, she helped John’s parents organize Thanksgivings on the Mirick farm, a tradition that continues. There have been as many as 32 family members for thanksgiving dinner, many of them staying for a few days, filling the beds in the rambling 18th century house and in the summer cottage, with young children and teenagers sometimes in sleeping bags on floors. It was always a boisterous get together.

New Years Day – Diane’s birthday – was always celebrated with a bonfire in one of the fields on the Mirick farm, with the country kitchen overflowing with food and filled with family and friends coming in from the bonfire and the sometimes bitter cold of early January. The celebration was capped off with one – or more – birthday cakes, but only one candle because birthdays were celebrated one at a time.

To celebrate their 70th birthdays, Diane and John took the family on a National Geographic small boat cruise to coastal Alaksa. It was a wonderful trip with sea otters, walruses, whales, eagles, puffins, sealions, and bears, and excursions in Zodiacs. One of Diane’s great joys in recent years was looking at the group photo taken on the fantail on the boat with the Alaskan seacoast in the background: Diane and John, Chris and his wife Catherine with their children Susanna and Benjamin, and Seth and his wife Rebecca with their children Abigail, Daniel, and Jacob.

In addition to her husband, her children, and her grandchildren, Diane is survived by her three younger brothers: Mark Lohman who lives in Augusta, Maine; Steve Lohman who lives in Jackson, Wyoming, and Fred Lohman who lives in Efland, North Carolina.

There are no calling hours. There will be a memorial service at the First Unitarian Church in Worcester on Saturday, September 20th at 11:00 a.m. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that memorial gifts be made to the Heritage Fund of the First Unitarian Church https://www.firstunitarian.com/giving/ to Mount Holyoke College https://www.mtholyoke.edu/ , or to Tower Hill Botanic Garden https://nebg.org/advancement/ . Arrangements are under the care of Miles Funeral Home, 1158 Main St., Holden.