A Memorial Service to celebrate the lives of Bill and Connie Tate will be held on Monday, November 25 at 4 p.m. at Trinity Church, 33 Mercer Street, Princeton.
Constance Tate
Constance Klein Tate, a beloved wife, mother, grandmother, and friend, passed away peacefully at home on October 13 at the age of 88. Born on September 24, 1936, in Gross Pointe, MI, Connie grew up in Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC. She graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1954 and pursued her passion for nursing at Grace New Haven School of Nursing and Boston University.
In 1964, Connie met Dr. William James Tate III, a medical resident at Yale New Haven Hospital. They married that same year and moved to Pittsburgh, PA, and Morgantown, WV, before settling in Princeton, NJ, in 1969 to raise their family. Bill passed away in May 2020.
As her children grew older, Connie returned to nursing, dedicating 15 years to caring for students at McCosh Infirmary at Princeton University. She also worked as a substitute nurse in Princeton schools and for Hoffman LaRoche, supporting clinical trials. She proudly completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) in the early 1990s.
An avid traveler, Connie’s adventures began in her early 20s when she spent a summer riding a scooter through Europe with her younger sister. In the early 1970s, she drove from New Jersey to Costa Rica twice in an unairconditioned VW Beetle with graduate student friends. Later, she and Bill completed the 192-mile coast-to-coast walk in England and joined Bill on Yale Alumni Chorus trips to Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
Connie pursued lifelong learning with enthusiasm, auditing courses in history, politics, and literature at Princeton University, often arriving early on registration day with Bill so they could secure their first choices. She also discovered a passion for painting, finding joy in icon writing classes at Trinity Church through The Prosopon School of Iconology.
Connie is survived by her children, William (Anne Christine), Abigail Reynolds (Spencer), and Sarah Constable (Ian); her sister Carole and brother Fred in Florida; and her grandchildren, Spencer, Sydney, Peyton, and James Reynolds, and Emma and Matthew Tate.
A celebration of the lives of Connie and Bill Tate will be held on Monday, November 25, at 4 p.m. at Trinity Church in Princeton.