Alison Ann Weigel Hain was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on January 24, 1944, the oldest daughter of Mary Laura Sullivan Weigel and Henry Bourke Weigel.     

When Alison was born, her father was stationed in Alaska, where he was employed on the Canol Project, a World War II strategic project. During the war years, Alison and her mother lived in Cincinnati, in the home of her grandmother, Catherine Finnerty Sullivan. After the war, the family moved to New Rochelle, New York, where she attended the Ursuline School. Two younger sisters, Lucia and Andrea, were born during this period. Summers were spent at Birch Hill, the Weigel family home in Coreys in Upstate New York’s Adirondack Park.

Alison’s father, Henry Bourke Weigel, a New York architect, served as coordinator on the United Nations Headquarters design from 1949 to 1952. In 2023, Alison reminisced about a childhood visit to the building while under construction: “We walked right past the guards!” she recalled delightedly. Another vivid memory from this era was parading solo up and down the sidewalk in front of her New Rochelle home with a large poster on which she had lettered “I LIKE IKE” during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1952 presidential campaign.

During Alison’s teenage years, the Weigel family moved to Scarborough-on-Hudson in Briarcliff Manor, New York. Alison graduated as Briarcliff High School valedictorian in 1962. The theme of her valedictory address was, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.” She played field hockey and basketball in high school.

Alison attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, as an undergraduate. In 1966, she graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. The following year, she studied French as a graduate student at the University of Geneva in Geneva, Switzerland.

She began her career at the educational media production firm Guidance Associates in Pleasantville, New York (a division of publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). She produced and edited educational sound film strips. While at Guidance Associates, Alison’s favorite travel assignment was to Great Britain, where an exploration of Romantic poets led to a paid tour of the English countryside. Another early career highlight was meeting aviator Charles Lindbergh.  

A Sierra Club member, Alison met Frank Leslie Hain, Jr., on a Club hike in the early 1970s, at Bear Mountain in New York’s Hudson Valley. Alison helped Frank search for his lost Swiss Army knife, and a lifelong relationship began. Frank and Alison were married at Union Church in Pocantico Hills, New York, in 1974.

In the early years of their marriage, Frank and Alison lived in Tehran, Iran, where Alison taught English as a Second Language (ESL). They returned to the United States shortly before the Iranian Revolution.

Alison’s two daughters, Alexia and Jocelyn, were born in 1977 and 1979, and their family lived in South Salem, New York, when the girls were young. The family moved to Cold Spring Harbor, New York, in the 1980s, and Alison wrote newsletters for the Cold Spring Harbor and Merrick School Districts. She produced a video celebrating the bicentennial of West Side School in Laurel Hollow, New York, entitled A School in Time and Place. In the early 1990s, the Hain family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut. They returned to Long Island in the mid-1990s.

The Adirondack Park held special significance for Alison throughout her life. As a child, Alison and her family spent their summers on Stony Creek Ponds in Coreys, New York. Alison’s grandfather, George Alexander Weigel, built the family’s home, Birch Hill, in Coreys. Many of her fondest memories were formed at this special family home. Following her husband Frank’s retirement in the early 2000s, Alison and Frank moved full-time to the Adirondacks: to Essex and Westport in the Champlain Valley. Among other pursuits, Alison served as a development officer for Essex Community Heritage Organization (ECHO) and wrote articles for the Press-Republican newspaper in Plattsburgh, New York. Frank and Alison undertook a real estate development project in Elizabethtown, New York: they successfully transitioned a historic estate, Garondah, to a limited use development with conservation easements, Fisher Hill. Alison was proud to have kept a large portion of the land “forever wild.” She also wrote and published a book in 2017, Adirondack Caretakers: Guardians of Property and the Wilderness, which profiled caretakers of Adirondack great camps.   

Alison was an avid gardener, and was happiest while raking, pruning, weeding, and planting in her own gardens. She belonged to three Garden Club of America (GCA) clubs: Three Harbors Garden Club on the North Shore of Long Island; New Canaan Garden Club in New Canaan, Connecticut; and the Adirondack Garden Club in Upstate New York.

Alison was an Anglophile who treasured her visits to British gardens and country houses. She visited Ireland several times, returning to the Village of Fedamore in County Limerick, birthplace of her beloved grandmother, Ellen Bourke Weigel—known to Alison and her sisters as “Gran.”   

Alison lived at Christian Fellowship House in Syosset, New York, for the final years of her life, close to her daughter Jocelyn. She died of complications from dementia at the Mary Ann Tully Hospice Inn in Melville, New York, on October 12, 2025. She was predeceased by her husband of 49 years, Frank. She is survived by her sisters, Lucia Weigel Hrinyak of Hanover, Pennsylvania, and Andrea Weigel Clark of Ridgeland, South Carolina; her daughter Alexia (Lexie) Hain, her spouse Marguerite Wells, and granddaughters Phoebe and Petra, who reside in Ithaca, New York; and her daughter Jocelyn Wenk, her spouse Christian Wenk, and grandson Alexander and granddaughter Charlotte, who live in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Alison was known as “Gran” to her own grandchildren, and she had no greater joy than introducing her grandchildren to the Adirondack Mountains and baking chocolate chip cookies with them.

Alison will be interred with her husband Frank in the Weigel family plot at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. A private memorial mass for Alison will be held at the Church of the Magdalene in Pocantico Hills, New York, on All Saints’ Day in November 2025. Alison, a lifelong Roman Catholic, wrote to her daughters on All Saints’ Day in 2007, “Let us remember today, on the feast of All Saints’ Day, those in our family who have gone before us.”