Faith Sommerfield, 82, of Greenwich, CT, died peacefully on September 27, 2022, at the time of her choosing, in Basel, Switzerland.
A fourth-generation New Yorker, Faith was born on March 18, 1940 and graduated from the Dalton School. She majored in English at Smith College and spent her junior year abroad at Université de Paris. She graduated from Smith College in 1962.
Faith began her professional career as a fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Following Harper’s, she worked as a director of public relations in Manhattan and completed a certificate program at the New York School of Interior Design. In 1969, she married Barrie B. Sommerfield; and in 1976, Faith, Barrie, and their two young children, Peter and Emily, moved to Greenwich, Connecticut.
In Greenwich, Faith established her own interior design company, Sommerfield and Warren, which met the needs of residential and commercial clients. Never one to sit idly by, she volunteered extensively in her community, devoting time and talent to organizations such as her children’s schools, Greenwich Library, the Greenwich Library Art Committee, the Junior League of Greenwich, and the Connecticut Angel Network.
For over forty years, Faith was a congregant of First Presbyterian Church of Greenwich, where she taught Sunday school and served as deacon, elder, and Stephen’s minister. Ever the ardent student and lover of music, she undertook, in her sixth decade, the study of voice and music theory and discovered she possessed a light soprano voice with accurate pitch. For many years, she delighted in singing with the chancel choir.
Having witnessed terrible deaths during her childhood, Faith believed acute suffering at the end of life contradicted God’s plan. This belief led her to become an inaugural member of the Hemlock Society. Her desire to find solutions for relieving human suffering while honoring personal dignity resided at the core of what she deemed a life well-lived.
In 2019, Faith founded The Completed Life Initiative, an international organization dedicated to helping people understand their rights to self-determination at the end of life. She was grateful to be blessed with the resources to have a voluntary death when she believed her life had been completed.
Faith Sommerfield is survived by her children, Peter Sommerfield (Jennifer) of Stamford, CT and Emily Kunschner (John) of Greenwich, CT; her sister, Lynn Stern of New York City, and her companion, Alan Mackenzie of Stamford, CT. She was the very proud grandmother of Emma and Owen Kunschner and Devyn Sommerfield.
A service celebrating the life of Faith Sommerfield will be held at First Presbyterian Church of Greenwich, One West Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, on Friday, October 7 at 2 pm. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Completed Life Initiative (completedlife.org) in honor of Faith.
