Catherine Orloff

Catherine Covell Orloff, a longtime resident of Newport and Providence, passed away peacefully on the 27th of October, 2025, at the age of 82 in Whittier, California. Born in 1943 on August 2nd—the same day as her own mother's birthday—Cathy was a generous, engaged, high-spirited source of inspiration for all who came to know her. She succumbed to Alzheimer's after a brave and dignified journey, leaving behind a legacy of love, education, and community service.

Cathy was a devoted mother to her two children, Edward Orloff and Christine Fletcher, and a doting grandmother to her three grandchildren, Alex, Noah, and Lily. Cathy will also be missed by her two sisters, Marion Covell Sousa of Huntersville, NC and Ruth Covell of Gorham, Maine.

An alumna of Elmhurst Academy and Trinity College, where she majored in Chinese, she taught Chinese to American pilots at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, California during the time of the Vietnam War. She would eventually leave that job due to her opposition to the war. She eventually returned to her home state of Rhode Island to raise her family, working first as a real estate appraiser for DiPrete Realty and then a special education teacher at Central High School, from which she retired in 2019.

Cathy had an unwavering commitment to social justice, especially as articulated by the single-tax economic philosophy of Henry George. She often organized community education classes throughout Rhode Island devoted to his ideas about ending poverty. She sat on the board of Operation Clean Government and volunteered for countless neighborhood cleanup drives.

Cathy had a lifelong devotion to classical music, from her girlhood days studying the French horn ("the most difficult of all instruments") to afternoons playing piano études for her grandchildren, to her final hours listening once more to the sacred music of Bach. She sang in the Rhode Island Civic Chorale and many church choirs—though her very favorite songs were the three-part rounds she sang with her sisters and cousins on long summer evenings on the porch of their family home in Newport. She loved the wild roses of Second Beach, watching the waves break against the rocks of Sachuest Point and the Ocean Drive, and sailing her tiny sailboat on Mashpaug Pond. In Rhode Island, she said, you were never too far from the water.

Calling hours will be held on November 14, 2025, at 10:00am at Channing Memorial Church, 135 Pelham St. Newport, RI. Funeral services will follow in the church immediately following at 11:00am.

Burial will follow at Island Cemetery, 30 Warner St. Newport.

As we bid farewell to Catherine Covell Orloff, we celebrate a life beautifully and conscientiously lived. She will be dearly missed by her family and friends. May she rest in peace.