Sarah Elizabeth deLima (née Boulton) of Cohasset passed away peacefully on December 13, 2023, after living for years with leukemia. An accomplished stage and cabaret performer, she was the beloved grandmother (“Ani”) of eight, mother of four, and wife of one.
Sarah was born on May 26, 1947 in Shillong, India, and was the second-to-youngest of the Reverend Walter Boulton and Lorna Batley Boulton’s six children. She grew up for much of her childhood in Guildford, England, where her father was Rector and Provost in the Church of England. She and the family helped support his pioneering project, building Guildford Cathedral – one of only four new Anglican cathedrals constructed in England for roughly 800 years – by laying bricks on weekends.
Having attended The Abbey (Malvern, UK) and the Albert Schweitzer College (Switzerland), Sarah graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1967. After a whirlwind courtship in Rome, she married Richard Ford deLima in December 1969, and subsequently became the adored mother of Jane, Jonathan, Kate, and Caroline. Sarah and Richard raised their children in Cohasset, Massachusetts, where the couple remained for the rest of their lives. Richard died in 2020.
Sarah took many adventurous leaps in her lifetime, including teaching English in Thailand for a year, starring as one of the two Ruby Sisters in an East Asia cabaret tour, moving to the U.S. to start a family, returning to theater professionally in mid-life, and meeting her joys and infirmities with little reservation – and also literally jumping off the roof of her house into the pool, a plunge she was (in)famous for taking well into her sixties.
Sarah was known for her warmth and generosity of spirit, both in daily interactions and in her work onstage; among theater colleagues, she earned the nickname “Lovey.” Whether people knew her from saying hello at the supermarket, from seeing her across the footlights, or from acting alongside her, they recognized Sarah as loving, charismatic, authentic, and wise, with a ready and irresistible laugh.
While she enjoyed portraying Brits in stateside shows (by favorites including Wilde, Coward, Frayn, Shakespeare, Sondheim, and Lerner), Sarah found some of her most surprising and rewarding work in productions that forced her out of her English accents: Grey Gardens, Marjorie Prime, and even Steel Magnolias (twice). She was eager to learn and to grow, especially, and inspiringly, in her later years.
A lover of language, Sarah played Scrabble weekly (sometimes daily) for decades, even co-inventing a more challenging variation on the game; she once emerged as the astonished victor at a New England Scrabble championship. More recently, Sarah loved playing Wordle and Spelling Bee, and did so deftly.
Sarah is survived by her children, Jane deLima Thomas, Jonathan deLima (Siobhan Spain), Kate deLima (David Dwiggins), and Caroline deLima Rubb (Eric deLima Rubb); grandchildren, Gabriel deLima Thomas, Truus Spain deLima, Marley, Alice, and Henry Dwiggins, and Oliver Banjo, Leo, and Eloise deLima Rubb; siblings, Kate Firestone, John Boulton, and Jane Rothstein, and their families; late sister Julia Scott’s family; extended deLima families; close friends; and countless people she felt lucky to know.