Deborah Ann Oakes Whitney, 83, of Duxbury, MA died on Thursday, May 29, 2025 at the Pat Roche Hospice Home in Hingham, MA after a long illness.

Debby was born in Plymouth, NH to Howard E. Oakes and Barbara B. Oakes on June 22, 1941. She graduated from her beloved Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart in 1959. She also graduated from some college in Virginia that she hated so much we never learned the name. It’s not important and it doesn’t exist anymore anyway but NCDS is going strong and Debby loved being connected to it her entire life. Her 1959 class ring was a permanent fixture on her finger along with her wedding ring.

Debby’s family moved frequently during her childhood, often as much as every year, and contributed to a sense of dislocation and a yearning for a feeling of home. Debby found a home most notably at NCDS, in her marriage to Dick, her new Naval family, her subsequent years in Japan, and her last 30 years in Duxbury, MA. Her faith was also an ever present home, manifested physically in the form of Holy Family Church in Duxbury.

Those who knew Debby know her as a fierce fighter (for advocacy and inclusion, for a sense of rightness, and for good manners) as well as sometimes, simply, fierce. She possessed an irreverent sense of humor and, always, no shame at telling anyone what she thought. She cared fiercely for her mother and husband through their long illnesses, her children through various missteps and rocky patches, and her garden (showing no mercy for the impudence of weeds).

She is survived by her children - Richard, Barbara, Christopher (Leslie), as well as many beloved cousins, nieces, and nephews.

Funeral services will be held at Holy Family Church in Duxbury on Thursday, June 5 at 11am. The burial will be private. Shepherd Funeral Home in Kingston is handling the arrangements.

Her family is so grateful for the care shown to Debby in the last years of her life by the compassionate and skilled team at Grace Life Care (Kaitlyn, Kerry, and Maureen), and the unflappable, humane and empathetic staff at the Pat Roche Hospice Home. 

Memorial donations may be made in her name to the Pat Roche Hospice Home and Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart.