Obituary: Velma Joan Hinton Wakeman, Member of The Moving On Group and St. Paul's Episcopal Church in North Andover

Obituary from Conte Funeral Home.

Velma Joan Hinton Wakeman died Sunday, April 12, 2015, at the age of 86. She was the widow of Cdr. Curtiss O. Wakeman, USN, who died in 1992.

Velma was born on October 22, 1928, to Irving E. and Velma (Hargreaves) Hinton. She graduated from North Andover’s Johnson High School and attended Nasson College and Macintosh Business School. In her early twenties, she was one of the first women to work as a bank teller in Lawrence. She also worked at the Registry of Deeds.

She met her husband on Cape Cod when he was a midshipman at the Naval Academy and they married upon his graduation. As the wife of a Navy pilot, she established homes in Trinidad, Panama, Bermuda, Pensacola, Virginia Beach, Alexandria, Corpus Christi, Newport, and Annapolis. After Curt’s retirement, the family lived briefly in Linwood, New Jersey, before she returned to her beloved hometown of North Andover.

Velma had a gift for making and keeping friends. She kept in touch with friends made around the world and counted childhood friends among those she was still close to in her eighties. She was a member of The Moving On Group and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in North Andover, the same church in which she was baptized.

She is survived by a daughter, Tracy Velma Wakeman, sons Tod Hinton Wakeman and Bradford Buckley Wakeman and his wife Wendy (Darwin) Wakeman, and a granddaughter, Millicent Shaw Wakeman, all of North Andover; and cousins Charles A. and Martha Salisbury of North Andover and Stephen H. Salisbury and Elaine Goodell of New Jersey, and their children and grandchildren.

A memorial service will be at 2:00 PM on Saturday, April 18, 2015 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Main Street in North Andover. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 396 Main Street, North Andover, MA 01845. To leave on-line condolences, please visit www.contefuneralhomes.com