Lucy Lee Abbot died on May 1 in Oak Bluffs. The cause was cardiopulmonary arrest. She was 73.

A loving mother and grandmother, Lucy lived on the Island off and on for most of her life, returning to stay for the past 20 years.

She was born on July 17, 1945 to Lucy Hart Abbot and Frank K. Abbot in Albemarle County, Va. She lived for a time in Texas with her parents, where she attended Woodbury High School, graduating in 1963.

When she was very young, she saved up to buy a horse. Her grandfather, William H. Hart, who was called Pop, made a deal with her: if she saved up half the money, he would put up the other half. By the time she had saved enough for a horse, she was a teenager. So she traded her money in for a car.

While living in Bethlehem, Conn., she enrolled in Shimer College where she received a bachelor’s degree in education and history in 1966. She taught from 1966 to 1969 in Illinois and Maryland, and then worked at Texas Outward Bound from 1972 to 1974. After stints at Hampshire College and Manadnock Family and Mental Health, she became the owner of Little Lyford Pond Lodge with her husband Joel Frantzman from 1978 to 1988. The rural lodge lacked electricity, and Lucy’s siblings remember her sorting out the gas light fixtures in the 12 cabins and the spring-fed water system.

In the early 1990s, she moved to Jerome, Ariz., where she worked as the town clerk. She returned to the Vineyard in 1997, where she helped her mother, Lucy (Bideau) Abbot renovate her Camp Ground cottage in Oak Bluffs, and had two businesses, Genny’s Garden and Take A Seat.

For the past 20 years she worked as a paralegal with Rosemarie Haigazian and Sandy Kenney.

Lucy loved to solve problems and was a good observer of human behavior. She loved photography and crafts. She took pictures of sea birds doing silly things, put lovely collages together for Advent calendars, made aprons and pillowcases with her pictures on them and even won a contest. Her nephew Jesse Abbot recalled that Lucy gave him confidence as an adolescent. She had a wide range of literary and film tastes and a generous heart.

She was a surrogate mother to her brother Chris who recalled her generous, humorous, kind and unfailingly ethical nature. She taught Chris his first chords on guitar.

She loved the climate of the American West and traveled often to national parks and historic sites around the world, including trips to Dublin in Ireland and Petra in Jordan.

In the last years of her life she traveled often to Jerusalem to see her grand

children and helped raise her grandson Daniel Leo Frantzman. When, earlier this year, doctors told her she couldn’t fly again, she thought of ways to travel the world by land and sea.

She mourned the untimely death of her brother Kim in 1982. She is survived by her son, Seth J. Frantzman; siblings Genevieve H. Abbot, Christopher W. Abbot and Martha G. Abbot; two grandchildren and numerous cousins, nieces and nephews.

A remembrance for Lucy’s life will be held in July for friends and family. Details will be announced.