Directors & Committees

Cheney Cemetery Association, Inc. 2022

Director Bios

Carol L. Cheney
Carol is the great-granddaughter of Knight Dexter Cheney and great-niece of Russell Cheney whose paintings she has been studying and collecting for several years. Since 2002, Carol has served as president of the Cheney Cemetery Association. She is the retired president of Cheney & Company, a creative communications agency she established in 1983 to work with schools, colleges and other nonprofit organizations on their marketing and fundraising programs. She was a frequent speaker at national and regional conferences and recipient of many awards for her contributions to the field. Following her graduation from Sarah Lawrence College, she worked as a project director for the educational media division of Harcourt, Brace. Later she authored one and co-authored two books on needlepoint and was a commissioned designer of ecclesiastical needlework. She founded the Houston Embroiderers’ Guild in 1972 and was on the Embroiderers Guild of America board. Carol was a trustee and president of the Alumni Association of her alma mater and a director and member of the executive committee of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce. She grew up in Cleveland and now lives in Hamden CT near her brother Knight Dexter Cheney IV. She is mother of Emily, MIL of Bill and grandmother of Isabel and Charlotte.

Richard Otis Cheney IV
Richard Otis Cheney IV is the son of Richard O. III and Marguerite Cheney and grandson of Richard Otis Cheney, Jr. He graduated from Watkinson School and University of Tampa, with a dual major in Business Administration and Economics. He started his career with Mechanics Savings Bank in Hartford, CT where he obtained his SEC Series Seven license. He worked for several other banks (most due to mergers) spending the majority of his career with Rockville Savings Bank in Vernon, CT retiring in 2020 from the Savings Institute Bank. He married Lorraine Marie Emerson in 1989 and had two sons, Richard Otis Cheney V and Alexander Emerson Cheney. They built their current home in 2003 in the town of Somers, CT. Richard has served on many civic and municipal organization including: Masons; Shriners; Rotary; Faith United Church; North Central Connecticut Chamber of Commerce; Ellington Business Association; Little Sisters of the Poor; Somers Economic Development Commission; and a Justice of the Peace. He serves as the Vice President of the CCA organization and Chairman of the Grounds Committee.

Kristin Merrill
Kristin has worked with Carol Cheney for more than 20 years. She administered the Cheney & Company business and Carol’s 1816 historic building, King’s Block. Concurrently she also managed the Cheney Cemetery Association financial records and administration. While Kristin acted as treasurer for several years prior, in 2018 she was officially nominated as secretary and treasurer of the Cheney Cemetery Association board of directors. Kristin has made a career of teaming her right-brain talents with her left-brain skills. First and foremost she is an artist, whose jewelry and sculptures connect the essence of the natural environment with the beauty of precious metals and stones. She shows her creations throughout greater New England and maintains a studio in Bridgeport, CT. She has been an active organizer of the very successful Shoreline Arts Trail, was founder of Branford Artists Cooperative and has served on the boards of both organizations and that of Orchestra New England as treasurer. Kristin is equally adept at managing the intricacies of the business and marketing aspects of creative work. She continues to advise clients through her consulting practice and has lectured to many nonprofits and arts organizations on financial management for artists. In her spare time Kristin loves to cook and host large dinner parties. Kristin received her BFA from the School of American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology and lives on the Connecticut coast. She and her husband have two daughters 15 and 19.

Knight Dexter Cheney IV
Knight Dexter Cheney IV is the namesake of his great grandfather. He grew up in Ohio and Connecticut and attended the Woodstock Country School in Vermont. He earned a BBA from Nichols College and an MBA from the University of Oregon. Dexter served as a Coast Guard officer, leaving active duty to attend Episcopal Divinity School. He was ordained in 1980, first serving at St. Columba Episcopal Church in Detroit at which time he met his wife Barbara, also an Episcopal priest. He was presented with a “Spirit of Detroit” award recognizing his work as cofounder of People in Faith United. Dexter went on to serve as administrative officer of the Diocese of Michigan, was active in the Cursillo movement and was elected honorary canon of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit, a lifetime appointment. Since moving to Connecticut in 1993 when Barbara was called to a congregation in New Haven, Dexter has specialized in ministry with congregations in transition, holding several interim positions. He was chairperson of the charter revision commission of the Town of Hamden and currently serves on the Patient-Family Advisory Council of Northeast Medical Group, part of Yale New Haven Health. Dexter has officiated at several Cheney Family memorial services and is a member of the Cemetery Association grounds committee. He is an avid gardener and birder and enjoys woodworking. Barbara brought two wonderful children from a prior marriage to the family. In addition, there are three grandchildren. Dexter and Barbara have been married nearly 40 years and live in Hamden, Connecticut.

Kate Cheney Chappell
Kate is the daughter and granddaughter of two George Wells Cheneys who go back to the original George. She spent her childhood in Manchester in the “Tool Shed,” a house cobbled together from a gardener’s cottage, studio and root cellars that were part of Polly Cheney and Frank Cheney, Jr.’s homes next door. The family moved to Farmington, CT when she was 12, and she attended Oxford School (later Kingswood-Oxford). She attended Chatham College, and studied art and literature at the Sorbonne and L’Atelier Goetz (under the Sarah Lawrence program). She graduated from the University of Southern Maine in 1983. She is co-founder, with her husband Tom, of Tom’s of Maine, makers of natural toothpaste and other personal care products, where she directed R&D and New Product Development. She is on the board of their second company, Ramblers Way, an organic, sustainable natural fiber clothing business. Kate is a painter and printmaker with studios in Westbrook, ME and Monhegan Island. Her recent mixed media work on view at Cove Street Arts Gallery in Portland reflects her concern with the ill effects of human-generated pollution that upsets the interconnected web of life, especially oceans and sea creatures. Her work is in the collections of the New Britain Museum, the Portland Museum of Art, Colby, Bates and Bowdoin Colleges, and the New York Public Library. She is the mother of 5 children and grandmother of 10, and lives in Kennebunk with her husband Tom and an elderly Springer named Dylan.

Austin Cheney Smith
Austin Cheney Smith is the son of Mabel and Nathaniel Smith and the grandson of Austin Cheney. He graduated from Deerfield Academy and Denison University and has a Masters in Geology from Indiana University. After several years with Amoco Petroleum and four years in the US Air Force, he worked for RI Hospital Trust (now part of Bank of America) in institutional investments. He spent most of his professional career as a partner of the Boston investment firm of Standish, Ayer & Wood and retired in 2003. Austin and Susan, his wife of 53 years, have two sons and five grandchildren. They split their time between Eastham, MA on Cape Cod and Matunuck in southern Rhode Island. Austin serves on the boards of South County Hospital in Wakefield, RI, Neighborhood House Charter School in Dorchester, MA and the Rhode Island Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

Thomas Myers
Tom is the Great Grandson of Austin Cheney and Ruth Bacon Cheney. He received his BA in economics from St. Lawrence University, MA in positive psychology from the Union Institute & University, and a PhD in psychology and organizational development from the University of Twente (The Netherlands). In the 1990s, he served as Director of International Trade and Investment for the State of Vermont. Then in 2001, he moved to higher education where he was a full professor and Chair in the Stiller School of Business at Champlain College for twenty years. Currently, Tom is co-founder and partner of The Engagement Collective, LLC, and is skilled in Management & Strategy Consulting, Positive Organization Development, Entrepreneurship & Leadership, and certified in Appreciative Inquiry, Emotional Intelligence (EQi-2.0), Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the Strengthscope assessments. In addition to serving as a board member of the Cheney Family Cemetery Association, he is also an active board member of Reef Renewal, USA (coral restoration), and the Sudanese Foundation of Vermont. Tom enjoys biking, birding, cooking, fly-fishing, coral restoration work, technical scuba diving, and social science research. He lives with his wife, Julie, in Jericho, VT and they have two sons, Will (25) and Charlie (23).

Nathaniel B. Cheney
Nathaniel, 4th and youngest son of Kimberly and Margreta Cheney, was born in Hartford. He is grandson of Howell Cheney, the last Cheney chairman of Cheney Brothers and founder of the Howell Cheney Technical High School in Manchester. He attended the Kingswood School in West Hartford and graduated from Proctor Academy in 1963 and Middlebury College in 1967 majoring in sociology. He began his career with First National Bank of Boston (now Bank of America) and after 4 years at the home office was posted first to Nassau, Bahamas and then Sao Paulo, Brazil. He spent most of the decade of the 1970s living abroad, returning in 1980 to work for Bankers Trust (now Deutsche Bank) in New York doing correspondent banking in Spanish speaking South America. Following the “Latin American Debt Crisis” of the 1980s he left banking and embarked on a career as a financial advisor with Raymond James Financial Services in and around Montclair, NJ which he pursued for 35 years, retiring in 2019. He is married to Julienne Pape and has two daughters from his first marriage, Heather and Kate, and three grandchildren all living in Massachusetts. Thanks to his time in Latin America he is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and now volunteers as a tutor in English as a second language. He has served as warden and vestryman several times at St. James Episcopal Church in Upper Montclair, NJ and now lives in Bloomfield, NJ.