DIANE MARIE CUSHMAN

BRISTOL — Diane Cushman, an intrepid traveler and devoted nurse, passed away on Jan. 25, 2025, leaving behind a legacy of devotion to community and a spirit for adventure that began in her childhood in Bristol, Vt. Diane would recount the day she boarded the Greyhound bus for Nashville, Tenn., as the beginning of a great adventure.

Leaving her hometown behind, Diane enrolled in the nursing program at Vanderbilt University, where she followed in her mother’s nursing footsteps. While at Vanderbilt, Diane helped to found the Student Health Coalition, which advocated for socially and economically disenfranchised populations across the landscape of healthcare, with social justice at the center of their advocacy. It was also at Vanderbilt that Diane found a lifelong friend in the founder of The Center Pole, an organization which empowers indigenous people on the Crow Reservation through education, entrepreneurial skills, food sovereignty, and cultural ownership.

Diane was deeply proud of her alma mater, and remained connected to her friends and colleagues there throughout her life.

Diane lived and worked as a nurse abroad at a U.S. Army Hospital in Germany, and worked stateside in Tennessee, Michigan, and North Carolina. Chapel Hill was an especially important place in Diane’s life, where she and her sister Mary surrounded themselves with witty and uproarious friends. Diane traveled back to North Carolina beaches annually to reunite with this band of special people.

A cornerstone of Diane’s legacy is her career in Vermont as a home health pediatric nurse, serving the most vulnerable families in Addison County. Diane worked to expand and strengthen pediatric and maternal-child health care and ensured that children with special needs received the care, resources, and dignity they deserved. Diane was instrumental in developing the Pediatric High-Tech Nursing program, which allowed medically complex children and adults to receive critical care safely at home.

She was also a generous mentor who shaped the next generation of nurses and home health professionals with her wisdom, high standards and unshakable belief in their potential. Diane’s legacy lives on in the countless children, families, and colleagues whose lives she changed for the better.

Diane’s tenacious work as a nurse enriched the lives of those around her in numerous ways outside of direct service. Diane was a founding member of the Vermont Global Village Project, where she co-led study-abroad opportunities in Ghana for Vermont high school students. The VGVP promoted personal growth and world peace through local and global community connection. Diane was fond of saying the most important outcome of VGVP was to observe the kids returning from their travels as “citizens of the world.”

Diane’s time with the VGVP spawned a lifelong love affair with the country of Ghana, and fostered prevailing friendships with hundreds of peers, students, and leaders. Diane lived her values of global citizenship, traveling all over the globe to Australia, New Zealand, Haiti, the Caribbean, Hawaii, Botswana and all across Europe.

Diane was a proud member of the Pocock Entertainment Committee since the 1970s. Amidst this group of distinguished hooligans, you might have seen Diane strut down the street in the annual Bristol 4th of July Parade dressed as a cavewoman, an alien, a zebra mussel, or a pirate, often in a pair of iconic neon camouflage leggings. Her membership in the PEC brought her immeasurable joy and, in her final days, surrounded her with boundless love.

Diane refused to be encumbered by illness. She served as Bristol’s Town Health Officer, played board games with her friends, and could be found throwing toast at a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Diane spent time visiting family across the country, traveling to Hawaii with her son Will, and she never missed a Tunbridge Fair. Even when Diane was in Boston receiving radiation treatment, she was a woman about town visiting museums, learning about the historic city, going to musical shows, and making countless new friends.

Diane outlived every prediction and probability with dignity, living fully and on her own terms until the very end. Diane was tremendously proud of her two children, Anna and Will, and was overjoyed by the birth of her grandson Sebastian.

Diane is predeceased by her parents, Elisabeth and Thomas Cushman; and her two brothers, Thomas and Edward Cushman. She is survived by her children, Will and Anna Smith (Ryan, Sebastian); her sister, Mary Cushman and her two children Douglas (Sara, Aurora) and Elisabeth Porter (Quinn Doyle); and Anna and Will’s father, Bill Smith, and his family. She also leaves behind her sister-in-law Norma Cushman (Joe, Brian, Erika, Olivia, Avery); her niece Alex Harper (Jared, Evan); Ethan Ready (Elizabeth, Abe, Louis), and many cousins.

A celebration of Diane’s life will be held at the United Church of Lincoln on May 17, at 1 p.m., followed by food and fellowship at Burnham Hall, in Lincoln, Vt. Diane’s family requests that you make a donation to an organization that befits her memory. She always believed in helping others. ◊