Vassar “Billie” Conkling, an art needlework creator and teacher who was the first woman senior warden at Old St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, died in her sleep Aug. 10 at the Blakehurst Retirement Community in Towson. She was 98 and formerly lived in Guilford.
Born in Baltimore, she was the daughter of Vassar Adderholt Townsend, a homemaker, and John Shotwell Townsend, president of the former Calvert Bank. Raised in Homeland, she recalled in a memoir that the site of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen was “an empty field where I would go and pick daisies.”
She attended Bryn Mawr School, the Greenwood School and an art school in New York City. She married William H. Conkling, a World War II veteran and printing executive.
Mrs. Conkling became a student of Marie L. Stroh, who owned and operated an art needlework studio and school on Charles Street.
“My mother was an only child. Her parents were also only children,” said her son, William H. “Bill” Conkling Jr. “She understood that having friends was essential to enriching her life. She had a diverse range of friends of all ages and backgrounds.”
Mrs. Conkling went on to found Billie Conkling Needlepoint, where she taught and sold needlework supplies for volunteers and craftspersons who made ecclesiastical needlework for houses of worship. She taught needlepoint from a studio on Bellona Avenue in Ruxton.
“She was just so welcoming,” said Barbara Green, with whom she worked. “She had wonderful ideas for needlepoint. Her color sense was out of this world and could mix all sorts of shades together. She was delightful and would not sit still for a minute.”
As part of her business, she bought yarn from a New York supplier specializing in Oriental rug repair.
“This was a time when women carried needlepoint handbags and every man in town sported a needlepoint belt,” she said in a Blakehurst newspaper. “I would take the finished items to a little place, also in New York, behind the Empire State Building, where the needlepoint was mounted or backed with leather. I was once told that our store made more belts than any shop in the United States.”
After being asked for a design for kneelers for St. John’s Church in Cockeysville, Mrs. Conkling began designing canvases and coordinating yarn for churches, including the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation, Old St. Paul’s Church and the National Cathedral in Washington, where she made needlework pieces for a children’s chapel.
She was a member — and the first woman to serve as senior warden — at Old St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in downtown Baltimore, the city’s oldest religious congregation. She was a trustee of St. Paul’s School for Boys and St. Paul’s School for Girls.
Survivors include two sons, William H. “Bill” Conkling Jr. of Vero Beach, Florida, and Charles T. Conkling of Baltimore; six grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Her husband, an owner of French-Bray Printers, died in 1989.
Services and interment are private.
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