Anne Welch Gordon, a resident on Eastville avenue for 27 full years of retirement and for summers since 1942, died on Nov. 23 in Oakland, California, where she was living near her daughter.

Anne was born in Northampton and raised there and in Princeton, N.J., with a two-year stint in Austria where her father, Roy Welch, was on sabbatical from teaching music. She and her siblings, Kitty, Spencer and Roy, came to the Vineyard as teenagers and later brought their children every summer.

After graduating from Smith College in 1943 Anne served in the U.S. Navy as a translator in Washington, D.C., where she met another Navy officer, George Gordon. They were married in 1946. Anne taught music to elementary school children during a 30-year career. After she and George moved to the Vineyard in 1981 she gave piano lessons to Island children.

During her active retirement she joined the Want To Know Club, sang in the choir and rang hand bells at the West Tisbury Congregational Church, drove for Meals on Wheels, helped out with the Vineyard Sinfonietta and at the Community Services Thrift Shop, and involved herself in other music and environmental organizations. She was the music director for shows by Theater Arts Productions at schools on the Island, and she played piano for square and contra dances with the Flying Elbows.

George Gordon died in 1993. Anne is survived by her daughter, Kate Gordon Gross, and her son, Peter Gordon, and their families, including Peter’s daughter, Anna Gordon, a 2003 graduate of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. She also leaves a large contingent of nephews, nieces and other grateful relatives and friends with whom she faithfully kept in touch until she was no longer able to.

There will be a memorial service on the Vineyard this coming summer.