True Lash Moseley, age 73, of Hoboken, New Jersey passed away on December 15, 2019.
True was born on April 19, 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of Dr. Elizabeth and Theodore Lash. She grew up in Willoughby, Ohio, where she graduated in 1964 from South High School. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in history cum laude from Smith College in 1968 and a Masters Degree in Public Communications from Boston University in 1971. She first worked in Boston as head of public relations for Boston Model Cities and then with the Boston Parks Department.
In the early 1970s, a first-year Harvard law student named Thomas E. Moseley was assigned a moot court partner who was dating a young lady with an unattached roommate — True Virginia Lash, a recent arrival in the Boston area. Tom’s moot court partner insisted that Tom call the roommate, finally forcing him into a phone booth to ask True for a date. They married on August 17, 1974 at King’s Chapel in Boston, the beginning of what would be a 45 year marriage.
True worked in corporate public relations for agencies including Donley Communications in Manhattan and Ev Clay Associates in Miami, but eventually retired to become a full-time mother and, later, grandmother. With a lifelong interest in art, she came into her own as a watercolorist. Her subjects ranged from the rocky coast of Maine to Hoboken, where she lived. She regularly took courses at the Montclair Art Museum (“MAM”) and was part of MAM’s 2018 fall program in Venice. At the time of her death, she was working on a watercolor about her family history and had just shown a watercolor in the style of Charles Burchfield at a recent MAM exhibition.
True was active in Friends of the Hoboken Public Library and the Hoboken Republican Party, serving several terms as committee woman for her ward. Devoted to the family dog Maggie, she loved to sew prize-winning Halloween costumes for Maggie and march with her and family members in the Ragamuffin Parade. She stayed in communication with her friends from high school and Smith, and attended her 50th reunions for both high school and college. She also found time to be an amateur golfer and keep up her mother’s house in Willoughby, where she would spend much of her summers.
Most of all, True loved to visit and spend time with her children and grandchildren. She was very loved by her granddaughter Sophie, with whom she spent hours reading books, playing with toys, and having tea parties. True enjoyed family trips to Maine to visit cousins Jean and Allen Workman and to Cape Cod for family vacations. True and Tom celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary with a trip to Paris and Normandy.
An only child, True is survived by her loving husband, her beloved children, Mary Moseley and Elizabeth Brito, and son-in-law Raphael Brito and her cherished grandchildren Sophie Rose Brito and Oliver Thomas Brito.
Visitation for True will be on Saturday, December 21, 2019 from 2:00 – 4:00 PM, with a service to take place at 3:45 PM, at Lawton-Turso Funeral Home in Hoboken (Corner of Washington and Seventh Streets, parking on Seventh). Burial private.
We live in the house next to the Willoughby house where True spent many parts of spring summers and fall.
A very smart and insightful person and fun to be around. It was a shock to hear of her passing. The world has lost a really good person and is lesser for her passing. She was always so proud of her daughters and always spoke of them aa well as looked forward to when they came to Willoughby.
Her gardens looked like watercolor paintings.
Who did not love and enjoy True and time spent with her? She was such an optimistic, friendly, compassionate, curious, smart woman who did indeed love and enjoy her husband, children, grandchildren, dogs and gardens. She stayed in touch with so many friends and particularly friends from Willoughby. Coming back to her childhood home every summer she would call me up and off we’d go as if no time had passed at all since high school. How I will miss her. My condolences to Tom, her beloved children and grandchildren. “If they ask for me, say: he had some business…in another world.
I was True’s housemate at Smith and just learned about her. All I can say is that my heart is broken.
She was iconic in my life. Memories of college fade, but memories of True are vivid and mostly hilarious. I’ve seen her once in half a century. It was last year, and I expected to see her again. I am heartbroken.