Shana Rimel Conron
Shana Rimel Conron, who held top legal posts with Citibank and was chairwoman of the board of directors for Citibank Delaware before retiring to Sag Harbor in 2004, died on Dec. 19. She was 79 and had been in declining health.
Ms. Conron was certified as a master gardener in 2007 and became a volunteer gardener at the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton. She also volunteered with the Sag Harbor Tree Fund, the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor, and the Perlman Music Program on Shelter Island.
She was born in St. Louis on Nov. 15, 1939, to Albert A. and Judith Stoller Rimel. She received a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis, an M.A. from the University of Illinois in Champaign, and a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia University in New York in 1977. She practiced law as an associate in the firm of Chadbourne & Parke in New York City until 1983, when she joined Citibank, where she held legal posts in the corporate and investment division and the general counsel’s office until being appointed head of the legal department for its global transaction services division, and then chair of the board of directors of Citibank Delaware. She retired in 2003.
Ms. Conron served on the boards of various civic organizations, including the Y.W.C.A., the United Way, the World Affairs Council, and the Business Roundtable. She participated in volunteer programs in the public school system and in gardening in the public parks of New York City.
She is survived by a daughter, Rachel Meyer Conron, and a sister, Rina Rimel Sjolund, and by uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, and friends all over the world.
Her husband, Michael A. Conron, an aviation industry executive with whom she lived on several continents, died before her. Her time in France with him “led to a sustained love of French language and literature that carried through to reading much of Proust in the original, and to orchestrating French-only meals and conversation groups wherever she went,” her family wrote.
“Her family and friends will remember her as a great connector, nurturing lifelong friendships by bringing together people who would otherwise never have met, assembling a patchwork of loved ones, not unlike the unique moss garden she created inch by inch at her Sag Harbor home,” they wrote.
Donations in her memory have been suggested to the Sag Harbor Tree Fund, P.O. Box 3133, Sag Harbor 11963, the John Jermain Memorial Library at johnjermain.org, and the Perlman Music Program, 19 West 69th Street, Suite 1101, New York 10023.