Norwich, VT - Paula Trepanier Harris, 88, passed away peacefully April 22, 2019, in Hanover, New Hampshire.

She was born January 5, 1931 in Manteno, IL, a daughter of John Paul and Anne Stamm Trepanier.

Paula attended convent school in Manteno, and earned her Bachelor's Degree in English at Purdue University, where she met Joseph David Harris. They were married October 27, 1951, and lived in Chicago, Utah and Germany while Mr. Harris earned his PhD and began a career in Physics. They moved to Hanover in 1959 when he took a position at Dartmouth, and settled in Norwich in 1962, where they raised their family of four children, until they divorced in 1981.

Paula lived an aesthetic, literary, and contemplative life of purpose. She was a vibrant member of the Norwich community, and active communicant of St. Francis of Assisi Chapel. She was a lifelong teacher who read aloud to her children every day, gave CCD instruction in the St. Francis parish, and created American cultural history classes for the Rassias Language Programs at Dartmouth.

Paula was an avid cook. She shared her culinary expertise, enriched by living in France, in a weekly pamphlet ("Thought For Food") distributed by the Hanover Co-Op Food Stores. Her artistic sensibility found expression in the thousands of letters she wrote to friends and family, packed with acute perceptions of people and nature, as well as humorous drawings of her cats. She furnished her homes with refined taste, while also dealing in antiques to support her family. Paula lived in solidarity and service to others, particular those in need or pain, or dying.

She was predeceased by a son, Jed Harris, in 2017, brother Jack Trepanier and sister Tanice Iverach.

She leaves her children, David Baptiste-Chirot of Milwaukee, WI, Annie Tuley of Export, PA, and Paul Harris of Long Beach, CA; grandchildren, Leon, Dehlia, Louis, Brett, Paul, Rex, Covay, John, and Kate; great-grandchildren Ruby and Zachary; brother, Peter Trepanier of Scottsdale, AZ and several nieces and nephews.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Saturday May 11, 2019 at 1PM at St. Francis of Assisi  Chapel, 75 Beaver Meadow Road, Norwich, VT.

Per her request, in lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in Paula's memory to the Norwich Public Library, PO Box 290, Norwich, VT 05055.

Condolences to Paula's family may be made in an online guestbook at knightfuneralhomes.com