Elizabeth Bagley Gerlach

Libby’s memorial service will take place Saturday, June 20th at 11 a.m. at

 Grace Episcopal Church, 76 Eldredge Street, Newton Corner, MA.

The service will be livestreamed. To view the live stream, please visit http://http://www.harborview.live

Elizabeth “Libby” Gerlach (née Elizabeth Henderson Bagley) passed away peacefully on May 19, 2026, at home in Newton, Massachusetts. She was ten days short of age 99 and a half and she lived each year gratefully. A resident of Newton for more than 60 years, Libby was a faithful member of Grace Episcopal Church, a peace activist, a math teacher, a computer programmer/systems analyst, a tireless volunteer for local service organizations and the Newton schools, and a loving mother and grandmother. She was known for her bright smile, high energy, sharp mind, wry humor and frequent chortle, as well as her curiosity, love of learning new things and her devoted service to others.

Libby was born on November 29, 1926 in Baltimore, Maryland, at home, in a row house on East Eager Street where she lived, except while attending college, until she married in 1952. Her parents were Mary Monroe Harlan Bagley, an avid reader and lover of the Classics, and Dr. Charles Bagley, Jr., a pioneering neurosurgeon. Libby had one older brother, Dr. Charles Bagley, III, a psychiatrist who spent his career in Maryland.

During summers she lived at her maternal grandfather Judge William H. Harlan’s home in Bel Air, in rural Harford County, Maryland, where both her mother’s and father’s families had lived for generations. She spent summertime roaming her grandfather’s small farm, caring for her own pony, swimming in a spring-fed pool in the woods and being surrounded by cousins, aunts and uncles. When she was age five, Libby got a severe double ear infection after swimming. This was in 1932 before the advent of antibiotics, so to control the infection she underwent a risky double mastoidectomy operation and was extremely lucky to have lived. She spent many weeks in the hospital recuperating, being “spoiled”, she said, by the kind nurses and staff, and never went to kindergarten.

Libby attended the Bryn Mawr School, a private day school for girls, from first grade through high school. In reflecting on her school experiences Libby wrote of “loving the gym program and athletics, especially”, and being “very grateful for the academic skills I was taught… and very grateful for the healthy exercise we took for granted (which is still not available to the majority of American children, male or female!). We had it all on a silver platter!” Libby graduated from the Bryn Mawr School in 1944, having been awarded the prestigious Edith Hamilton Scholarship and serving as President of the Student Government her senior year.

Libby then attended Bryn Mawr College, following in the footsteps of her mother who was a 1915 alumna. She wrote that Bryn Mawr College, “like the school, offered more expectations of excellence, with no limitations (actual or implied) because we were women.” Libby played field hockey and lacrosse for Bryn Mawr College, served on the Undergraduate Council, and majored in chemistry, graduating in 1948. After college she returned home to Baltimore and worked as a research assistant at Johns Hopkins Medical School, where she co-authored six published scientific papers and laboratory exercises designed for teaching anatomy to medical students.

On April 19, 1952 Libby married Thomas B. Gerlach of Philadelphia, a Haverford graduate who she met while she was in college. During the first decade of their marriage, as Tom pursued his career with Turner Construction Company, Libby managed their moves to nine houses in four states and gave birth to three children: Tom, Betsy and Bill. They moved to Newton in 1962 and finally stayed put. They bought a rambling shingle style Victorian on West Newton Hill, where in the 1960s Libby was a busy at-home mother who helped foster a remarkable network of families from the neighborhood and Grace Church, who grew close and supported each other like a large extended family. Libby and Tom divorced in 1971, which she described as “a great disappointment to me.” She carried on with dignity when Tom moved to Philadelphia and remarried, always supporting Tom, Betsy and Bill’s continuing close relationships with their father up until his death in 2009.

Libby and the children continued to live in the West Newton Hill house after the divorce. During the 1970s an early food co-op organized by Libby and some friends was housed in Libby’s unfinished basement, which was also turned into a wildly popular, truly creepy haunted house on Halloween, the creative brainchild of a local young man who had nowhere else to stage it. Libby opened the third floor of her house to a series of divinity students and an extra second floor bedroom was provided to a teen girl in conflict with her parents and then to another who needed housing to complete high school after her family moved out of state.

Her professional work life began again when in 1969 she became interested in teaching math. She volunteered at first and then worked for six years for the Newton Public Schools as a paid teacher’s aide specializing in math at the Oak Hill Elementary School. She attended grad school at night and during summers, completing a M.Ed. at Boston University in 1976, after which Libby taught math and was the math specialist for six years at the Solomon Schechter Day School, a K-8 Jewish private school in Newton.

Beginning in 1982, at age 56, she pursued a new career in computer programming. After lucking into an excellent training course designed for teachers, she worked first for a computer consulting firm, then for the Bank of Boston as a computer programmer/systems analyst until she retired in 1998 at the age of 72. In 1994 Libby wrote her programming work “has always been interesting, with nice people who know they don’t know it all, since the technology changes so fast and everyone has to learn new things all the time.”

In the early 1980’s Libby moved to Newton Highlands, and to her great pleasure, Betsy and her family moved around the corner several years later. After she turned 90 she moved into an apartment at Cabot Park Village in Newtonville where she continued to live until she died. Libby enjoyed living in community at Cabot Park and she took on volunteer and leadership roles there, too, as was her habit.

Even during her busiest career years Libby made time for numerous social justice and environmental protection projects, peace activism, leadership roles at Grace Church, and community volunteer work. Much of this work continued until she was in her 90’s. For 14 years after she retired in 1998 Libby volunteered three days a week at Mason-Rice Elementary School as a math resource teacher. She described these years as the “best years of my work life!” She loved sharing her joy in math and she had such fun finding intriguing puzzles and problems and working with kids to solve them. In addition, until she was about 90 she delivered library books to elderly shut-ins up and volunteered weekly at the Newton Food Pantry. An active member of Grace Episcopal Church for over six decades, Libby served as Senior Warden and Treasurer, and was a leader of the Grace Church social action committee for years. Her work on nuclear disarmament, clean energy, social justice and peace activism took place over decades. From 2003 – 2011 during the Iraq War Libby could be seen holding her “Honk for Peace” sign every Thursday in Newton Center at rush hour, one of the stalwart few who continued a weekly vigil as the war dragged on. In 2017 the Boston Chapter of the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom awarded Libby the “Jane Addams Spirit in Action” Award for her “undaunted spirit and determination in working for complete and total disarmament and human rights for all.”

The pillars Libby lived by were faith, love and work. On the occasion of her 50 th high school reunion Libby wrote: “I’ve been blessed with good health; with healthy, independent but still attentive children; with interesting, intelligent and caring friends; and in my slow way I’vemanaged to keep learning and trying new things. There have been “downs” and some steep slopes and continuing attitudes and/or bad habits I wish I had changed long ago but haven’t. On the whole I am grateful to have been able to love and to work (and to understand how important they both are) and I hope to do both for as long as the Lord allows.”

She did. She loved fiercely and worked tirelessly to give service to others. Over her lifetime Libby spent countless hours teaching, counting, visiting and picketing. Libby’s last few years were less active, but she lived them graciously and lovingly, supported by her wonderful caregivers, family and friends. Until the day she died Libby said “thank you!” always to everyone, and reflected aloud so often: “Aren’t we lucky?”

Libby’s survivors include her children Thomas “Tom” Bradfield Gerlach, Jr. (Leigh Allison Stokes) of Healdsburg, CA, Elizabeth “Betsy” Henderson Gerlach (Harold William Dennis) of Newton, MA and William “Bill” Bagley Gerlach of Chestnut Hill, PA; and her grandchildren John Bradfield Gerlach, William “Will” Stokes Gerlach, Andrew Sidney Dennis, Elizabeth “Eliza” Henderson Dennis, Samuel “Sam” Jordan Gerlach, Maya Grace Gerlach, Charles “Charlie” Bowen Gerlach and Natalie “Abby” Maeve Gerlach.

Libby’s memorial service will take place Saturday, June 20 th at 11 a.m. at Grace Episcopal Church, 76 Eldredge Street, Newton Corner, MA 02458. The service will be livestreamed. To view the live stream, please visit http://harborview.live. 

In lieu of flowers the family asks that you consider making donations in Libby’s memory to: Women's International League for Peace and Freedom US https://wilpfus.org/take-action/donate/); the Episcopal City Mission of Boston (https://http://www.episcopalcitymission.org/donate); or Doctors without Borders USA (https://http://give.doctorswithoutborders.org/campaign/675296/donate).