Born 2/18/1938
Melrose, Massachusetts
Died 6/4/2023
Hinesburg, Vermont
Details of services
he family will plan a memorial gathering during coming months. If you wish to send condolences and/or be notified about the gathering, please contact Steve Carlson at steve@upperaccess.com.
Lisa (Elizabeth) Carlson died June 4 at age 86. After a colorful, productive life, she chose to remain comfortable in her Hinesburg home, with loving care by family, friends, and the amazing caregivers from UVM Home Health & Hospice.
Lisa was born in 1938 in Melrose Massachusetts. She is widely known for her pioneering work as a consumer advocate, as executive director of the national nonprofit Funeral Consumers Alliance and later the Funeral Ethics Organization. She wrote the book “Caring for the Dead,” and, with co-author Joshua Slocum, “Final Rights.” In 1995 she assisted Jessica Mitford in updating the best-selling “The American Way of Death.”
Other pursuits over the years included teaching school in Massachusetts and Vermont, and principal of the school at the old state hospital in Waterbury. Skilled in the building trades, she and her husband built their Hinesburg home and remodeled several others. She provided foster care for numerous wonderful young Vermonters. Back in the 1960s, she ran a restaurant in Plainfield, “The Hungry Pig and I.” She created Web sites before most other people even heard about the Web, and provided user help for business software. Other ventures included beetle taxidermy, fishing worm sales, and installing built-in vacuums.
Survivors include her husband Steve Carlson; son Stuart Mercer and daughter-in-law Mary Kelly Mercer; daughter Joie Brackett-Reeves; son Shawn Brackett; stepson Joshua Carlson; stepdaughter Rosalie Carlson; brothers Edward Shippen and Eugene Shippen; sister-in-law Laura Brackett; and grandchildren Matthew, Liam, and Ellie Mercer, Ellisa and Kadia Cox Brackett, and Kolbey Brackett.
Lisa’s body was donated to the UVM Anatomical Gift Program, transported by Stephen C. Gregory and Son.