By early 2005, Katharine Meacham had already lived a full life. She had raised four children, taught Sunday school and English as a foreign language, looked after her aging mother, taken graduate courses in literature and hosted hundreds of dinner parties, where she masterfully encouraged each guest to join in the conversation.

In recent years she had lost her eldest son to cancer, then her husband of 56 years, supporting him through memory loss the last half-dozen. Now at 83, she was looking to relax a little. She could allow herself a second glass of white wine. She even thought about meeting a suitable man, but only as a traveling companion. But instead winding down on her life, she started a new one.

Katharine Meacham Conover, as she would be known by year’s end, who had lived through war and McCarthyism and advances in technology and held unambiguous opinions about all of those things, died April 11 after a fall and a brief decline. She was 103.

A granddaughter, Wendy Legerton and her boyfriend, Dave Love, thought Dave’s grandfather might make a good match for her. Lloyd Conover was a scientist like her first husband – in fact, the chemist who had invented tetracycline – was two years younger than she and a gentleman.

Her first handwritten letter closed with a warning: "But if you don't like dogs or Democrats, don't bother to respond." Conover, then a Republican who lived in Connecticut, didn't reply at first. After a period of time their correspondence resumed, followed by his visit to St. Petersburg, Fla., in April 2005. They married Dec. 29, 2005, a double wedding with Legerton and Love. They spent half of each year in England the next several years, into their late eighties. Conover died in 2017, at 93.

Katharine Miller was born Nov. 13, 1921, the daughter of a medical college dean in Memphis, Tenn., and an English teacher. She remembered opening the newspaper at age 9 and seeing a headline about a man who had lost his wealth in the Depression and jumped off a building. Her household employed a maid who did the cooking. Her mother gave food away to strangers who showed up at the back door, and allowed her children to attend but never host birthday parties because their existence suggests guests ought to buy gifts.

She started writing journals at age 16 and continued most of her life. The first mentions a lecture about widespread concerns over militancy coming out of Germany. A memory from the summer of 1939 also stayed with her. The family was returning from a vacation in Gatlinburg, Tenn., when they stopped for gas. Her father bought a newspaper with an alarming headline: Germany had invaded Poland. The consensus between her parents was clear: World War II had begun.

She met Robert Meacham, a minister's son from Birmingham, Ala., at the Memphis college now known as Rhodes College. He joined the Navy. They were married Dec. 25, 1943. Ten days later he was deployed to the Pacific. He spent the next 18 months on a submarine; meanwhile, she earned a master's degree at Harvard Business School. When the war ended, she figured out where and when he would be returning to San Francisco and was there to surprise him on the docks.

She managed a growing family as he completed his doctorate in mathematics and began teaching at Brown and Carnegie Tech universities, respectively. They settled in Gainesville, Fla., where he taught math at the University of Florida. The reason, she always acknowledged, was that they explicitly wanted their children to grow up in the South.

In 1960 they moved to St. Petersburg as Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd College) opened its doors. She made a point of being available to talk to each child after school, strategically placing a rocking chair in the kitchen. She remained outspokenly engaged in social issues over the years. In 1978 she spoke to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., advocating for nuclear disarmament.

“Most thinking people now know that the nation state cannot solve the fundamental political and economic problems facing humanity,” she told the other delegates. “Regardless of its stockpile of nuclear destructive weapons, it cannot defend its people. Neither the Pentagon nor the Soviet government can defend its people.”

She remained a prolific lifelong reader, going through thousands of books and continuing past age 100. She continued to live independently at Westminster Suncoast six years after the death of her second husband. At her doctor's urging after a series of falls, she moved to assisted living 18 months ago. In March she moved to full-time hospice care, where she continued to say, as she had for years, that she was looking forward to dying.

She is predeceased by Robert Meacham, her husband of 56 years; Lloyd Conover, her second husband; and Robert Meacham Jr., her eldest son. She is survived by her daughters, Katharine Meacham and her husband, John Legerton, and Laura Meacham Keane and her partner, Paul Goodall; a son, Andrew Meacham, and his partner, Linda Mastry; daughter-in-law, Lynne Meacham and her husband, Kelley Griffith; stepchildren Kirk Conover and his wife, Patricia; Craig Conover and his wife, Audrey French; Heather Conover and her husband, Steve Brass; and Roger Conover; four grandchildren, six great-grandchildren; eight stepgrandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews. A memorial gathering starts at 2 pm, May 24 at the James Center for Molecular and Life Sciences, Eckerd College, 4200 54th Ave. S, St. Petersburg, Fla.