Clare Morris Peckham of Stonington, retired librarian at The Day and from a family of renowned journalists, died Monday, Sept. 7, at her home. She was 86.

Born Clare Rippey Pooler Morris on Aug. 2, 1929, in New York, she was the daughter of Joe Alex Morris and Maxine Pooler Morris. She was raised in New York and Washington, D.C., and was educated at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Co.

In 1949, she married William D. Peckham in Colorado Springs. The couple lived in New Jersey and Pittsburgh, and had four children. The marriage lasted 20 years.

She then moved with her children to Connecticut and she began working in the library at The Hartford Times, where her brother, Joe Alex Morris Jr., had been a reporter.

After the Times folded in 1976, she was hired by The Day as the newspaper’s librarian, a position she held until retiring at age 65 in 1994.

She kept lifelong friendships with journalists. Her father had been foreign editor of the United Press (later United Press International) and the New York Herald-Tribune and managing editor of Collier’s magazine.

Her brother was foreign correspondent for UPI, the Herald-Tribune, Newsweek and later the Los Angeles Times. In February 1979, he was killed by a sniper in Tehran while covering the Iranian Revolution.

She faithfully attended the annual lecture at the Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard established in her brother’s memory.

Just as faithfully, she read three newspapers — the New York Times, the Boston Globe and The Day — every morning until her recent illness.

She began working as a newspaper librarian in the era before digital technology, when virtually every story had to be “ripped” from that day’s edition and filed.

She never lost the habit of “ripping.” It was not uncommon for family and friends to receive letters from her with newspaper clippings enclosed.

With her beloved partner, John Coffey, then of New Haven, whom she met soon after moving to Connecticut, she shared a love of the theater, Broadway, dance, music, travel and entertaining.

Year after year, she hosted a Memorial Day picnic and croquet party at her father’s home in Guilford. She instilled in her children a love of music and cats. She was an avid reader, knitter, gardener, yoga enthusiast and cook.

During a yoga retreat at Playa del Carmen in the Yucatan in her early 70s, she acquired a “Mayan sun” tattoo behind one shoulder.

For the last few decades, she spent long summers at “Plum Posy” — the cozy shingled cottage she purchased in Eastham on Cape Cod, facing a tidal marsh across from Rock Harbor. She readily opened her home to scores of summer visitors. Among those visitors, through the years, were women she’d befriended — a few from childhood — and with whom she remained especially close and caring. She had a gift for abiding friendships of all kinds. She also was never shy about bursting into song whenever the spirit moved her.

Earlier this month, Thomas Farragher, a close friend from his days as a reporter for The Day and now a columnist for the Boston Globe, paid tribute to her in a column about his summer:

“Sang a sweet duet, an American classic, with my friend Clare, who is battling a cruel disease with a grace and dignity that is at once touching and painful,” he wrote.

Besides her partner, John Coffey, now of Waterford, she is survived by three children, Molly Read of Friendship, Maine, Alex Peckham of Hartford and Andrew Peckham of Boise, Idaho; her sister-in-law, Ulla Carter, of Los Altos Hills, Calif.; two grandchildren, Emily Lowney of Medfield, Mass., and Alex Hatch of Thomaston, Maine; three great-grandchildren, three nieces and several cousins in England. She was predeceased by a son, Robert Peckham, of Pittsburgh.

The family plans a memorial service at a later date. Donations in her memory may be made to the Center for Hospice Care Eastern Connecticut, 227 Dunham St., Norwich, CT 06360.