Marcia Arcate, One-Time Sleepy Hollow Community Leader, Dies at 92
Marcia Burns Arcate of Sleepy Hollow and Indian lake, NY died June 19, 2020 at the age of 92. Mrs. Arcate and her husband John moved to Sleepy Hollow with their three children in 1963. She immediately became active in many community and church organizations. During the 1960s, she was a co-President of the League of Women Voters and President of the St. Teresa’s PTA. She later became active in the village and town Republican Party. She resigned from the League when her husband ran for Village Trustee and she later served in that role herself. She was passionate about politics and good government. She described herself as a “Rockefeller Republican” and was at the forefront of working to stave off the conservative shift of the party in the mid-seventies.
Mrs. Arcate also helped start the blood donor efforts at Phelps Memorial Hospital and served as a volunteer for many years. She also volunteered for Meals on Wheels and led the Sleepy Hollow Garden Club. “Growing up it seemed like every organization my mother got involved in she ended up running,” said her daughter Cynthia. “But she didn’t just act as a caretaker of organizations,” said Arcate,“ she found solutions to problems and led change.”
Marcia Arcate was born in a snowstorm on January 28, 1928 in Albany, NY to John and Irene Burns. She attributed her love of the outdoors and strong constitution to growing up in northern New York. She vacationed as a child in the Adirondacks and came back to the area with her family by making a second home in Indian Lake. She was very knowledgeable about wild plants and animals, especially birds. Marcia instilled in her children and grandchildren the same appreciation for the outdoors and respect for wildlife. She and her husband took many hiking, canoe and backpacking trips with their children and taught them about the importance of protecting the environment through conservation long before the movement that later emerged. They were long-time members of the Adirondack chapter of The Nature Conservancy.
Marcia and her husband loved to travel, touring Africa, Alaska, Turkey and many other countries, especially later in life when John started his telecom consultancy, Complan. Mrs. Arcate also excelled academically. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Chemistry from the College of St. Rose in Albany. She was an accomplished pianist and loved to sing. She was an extraordinary cook and often entertained with large dinner parties. Throughout her life she played bridge and golf. Even with her short 4’10’ frame, she always hit the ball straight and was a deadeye putter. She had a passion for life and enjoyed people. She had a quick smile and a twinkle in her eye even at the end of her life. After her husband John died in 2008, she forged ahead and continued to make a life for herself at Kendal on Hudson, playing bridge, doing art and making new friends. She will be greatly missed.
Marcia is survived by her three children, John and his wife Tina of Sleepy Hollow, Christopher of Bowling Green KY and Croton-on-Hudson and Cynthia of Newton MA. She also is survived by three granddaughters and two great-granddaughters, Jessica Schuler of New Rochelle NY and her husband James with their children Abigail and Eleanor, Katherine Keehn and her husband Doug of Goldens Bridge and Marta Arcate- Bradin of Newton, MA.
Donations in her memory can be made to Cornell Lab of Orinthology, www.give.birds.cornell.edu.
Funeral Services were private.
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