“We didn’t want to mess up her perfect record,’’ said her daughter Lucy of Pembroke.
Mrs. Stokey, lecturer emerita in public policy at the Kennedy School, died of cancer Jan. 16 in her Cambridge home at 88.
Mary Jo Bane, former academic dean at the Kennedy School, said she opened doors for women at the institution.
“In 1987, I became the first woman to hold the title of tenured professor at the Kennedy School,’’ Bane said in a statement issued by the school, adding that she also “became the first woman to hold the title of academic dean. I use the language of ‘hold the title’ quite consciously, because I am not the first woman to do the jobs; Edith is.’’
Bane said “the fact Edith did the jobs, and did them so well, laid the groundwork for those of us lucky enough to be born a generation later to both do the jobs, though probably not as well, and to hold the titles.’’
Born Edith Morton Robinson in Mansfield in 1923, Mrs. Stokey graduated from Radcliffe College with a degree in economics in 1943. Weeks earlier, she had married Roger Provines Stokey, a US Navy officer in World War II, while he was on weekend leave. They had met at a college mixer.
While her husband served overseas, Mrs. Stokey worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, studying patterns of underwater sound for the Office of Naval Research. After the war, the Stokeys returned to school, he for a law degree, she for a master’s degree in mathematics. Then they moved to Wayland to raise their family.
In a biography for her 65th high school reunion in 2005, Mrs. Stokey recalled their “typical suburban life,’’ saying that “Roger practiced law in Boston; I chased after four children and kept busy in local politics.’’
When he was elected town moderator in Wayland, she realized that she wanted something more for herself.
