A Force of Nature Named Rima: A Community Remembers Rima Parkhurst

If you spent any time in Easton over the last few decades, you probably spotted her. A green Vespa parked outside Out of the Fire restaurant, or moving steadily along the sidewalk, its rider upright, hair catching the wind. That was Rima Parkhurst. Even well into her 90s, she had places to be and people to see. When she died on June 18, 2025, at the age of 97, the town didn’t just lose a familiar figure. It lost someone who showed what it meant to live exactly the way you wanted.

Rima didn’t come to Easton on a straight path. By the time she settled here, she’d already had more than a few careers. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on January 2, 1928, in a time when girls were supposed to be polite, patient, and quiet. But that was never her style. She worked in Washington, D.C., as assistant director of the American Civil Liberties Union, ran the Democratic National Committee’s Democratic Advisory Council, and became the first director of government affairs at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Rima later took on another first — Amtrak’s vice president of passenger services, the first woman to hold the job. She co-founded Parkhurst-Spence Consultants, a political consulting firm. She worked alongside former Senator Birch Bayh at his law firm before making Easton her home.

Once here, she didn’t waste time finding her place. She joined the boards of the Academy Art Museum, Chesapeake Chamber Music Society, and the Talbot Arts Council. She also became a Court Appointed Special Advocate for children in Talbot County — work she called the most difficult and the most meaningful she’d ever done.

One of the people who saw her in both public and private moments was Amy Haines, owner of Out of the Fire. First, a lunch regular, Rima became a friend who wasn’t shy about her opinions. When Haines announced she was moving the restaurant to a new location, Rima, then 94, wasn’t happy. “She would lament about the move and how much she would miss her favorite table,” Haines said. “I said, ‘Rima, you’ll be fine. It’s the same food, same people, same environment. Basically shut the flock up.’ And guess what? It was fine.”

That was Rima’s way — dig in her heels, then adjust. “She always worked through things with a great amount of aplomb, adaptability, and resilience,” Haines said.

She carried that same determination into her transportation choices. In her late 80s, she rode a Vespa without a helmet. She was often told a crash could kill her. Rima’s answer? “If I die driving my Vespa, that will be a very happy death,” she told friends. At 95, after a serious car accident ended her driving days, her children bought her a three-wheeler with a spot on the back for her cane. Haines still remembers seeing her ride through town, grinning from ear to ear.

Haines’ husband Richard Marks also got to know Rima through their shared involvement in the arts. In 2017, when the Dock Street Foundation brought the Ruth Starr Rose exhibit to Easton, she was the one who organized and trained the docents. “In no time, she knew more about Ruth Starr Rose than any of us,” Marks said. “She had a tremendous thirst for knowledge — she could never learn enough about enough things.”

Their work together turned into a friendship. For her 90th birthday, Marks and Haines took Rima to New York to see Hamilton. They stayed at the Algonquin Hotel, a place she appreciated for its history of writers and actors. “That was special,” Marks said. “One of many great memories.”

That’s what made Rima so special — her ability to turn a working relationship into something lasting. Rima’s friendships often began like that, with a shared project that led to phone calls, visits, and years of staying in each other’s lives. That was the case for Busy Graham, whose connection to Rima started in the early 1990s, when she was running the Institute of Musical Traditions and learned that the Maryland State Arts Council’s site visitor for their first grant application would be Rima Parkhurst. Graham thought the name sounded familiar “Come to find out that Rima was among my Mom’s very best friends on the Shore–AND the mother of musician-singer-songwriter Brooke Parkhurst whose concerts and recordings I had long admired. A very small world indeed!”

What started as a professional encounter quickly turned into a friendship. Graham said she came to admire Rima’s determination to live on her own terms. “She was a force of nature,” she said. “She definitely knew how she wanted to live her life.” That meant refusing a helmet on her scooter, being less than enthusiastic about moving to a retirement community, or waking up after her car accident annoyed that it wasn’t her time. “She thought that might have been it,” Graham added. “But then she came around, got used to it, and made the most of those last years.”

Gerry Early, who led the Talbot County Arts Council for more than two decades, knew her as both a colleague and a friend. “She was a wonderful, active, positive, creative, friendly, enthusiastic, and enormously popular board member,” he said. Her time there left a mark on arts programming in Talbot County’s schools and organizations. Even after they no longer worked together, they continued to meet regularly to talk about the arts and politics.

That was Rima, someone who couldn’t stay still. After stepping down from a position she had held, she wrote to friends letting them know she was looking for something new to do — and, in typical Rima fashion, gave them a detailed breakdown of what she could offer. “I bring the sum of all my experiences,” she wrote, reminding them that the sum included editing professional journals, directing congressional liaison at the Kennedy Center, serving as Vice President of Passenger Services at Amtrak, and leading local boards from CASA to Chesapeake Chamber Music. Her “ideal job,” she explained, was one where she worked three days a week with interesting people, had fun, and made a difference in the community — something she managed to do in almost everything she touched.

Ask anyone who knew her and you’ll hear the same words: resilient, curious, bold, independent. She liked a good debate. If you made your case, she might change her mind. If you didn’t, she might tell you you were “full of s***.” She read constantly, surrounded herself with younger friends, and kept up with technology, texting, emailing, and researching.

When she decided she had had enough, she handled it the same way she’d handled most things in her life — directly. Haines remembers Rima’s text to her husband, saying she was voluntarily entering hospice. “She told him, ‘I am tired and I don’t want to do this.’”

Still, when Haines went to Talbot Hospice to see her, the moment landed hard. Rima was asleep. Haines kissed her on the forehead, held her hand, and said goodbye. “My stoic rationalism broke down at that moment,” she said. “I wept for the loss of her physical presence and how I would miss her sassiness in my life.”

That sassiness was only part of how others saw her: to Amy Haines, she was also “a marvelous and cantankerous matriarch.” Busy Graham called her “a force of nature.” In Gerry Early’s account, she was an advocate whose work would outlast her. To Richard Marks, she was a woman with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, always eager to learn and teach in equal measure.

Put all of that together, and you can still see her — head high, moving through town, entirely in motion.

A memorial service will be held at the Academy Art Museum on Thursday, August 21, from 5–7 p.m., with friends, family, and neighbors gathering to share their own Rima stories.