Maggie at her piano in a corner of the elegantly
decorated living room of her bed-and-breakfast

Maggie Ullery is on the march again, showing that at 65 it is hardly too late to start out on a new adventure in life.

Her plan is to sell the bed-and-breakfast she has been running for 10 years in Wales, Massachusetts, a 10-minute drive to Sturbridge and Old Sturbridge Village, a re-creation of the New England past that is a major tourist draw. Once the B&B is sold, Maggie will move to either Los Angeles or Scottsdale, Arizona, to be near one or another of her daughters, and to pursue her career as an interior designer and revive her singing career.

This will not be the first major turn in Maggie's triple-barreled career, and she contemplates it without trepidation. She has moved from a career as an operatic soprano, choral director, and piano and general music teacher to overlapping careers as an interior designer and operator of a four-bedroom B&B laden with art works and antiques. She started the B&B in the same house she has lived in for 34 years.

Born Margaret Loomis in Amherst, Massachusetts, Maggie headed for New York City in 1964 with big ideas for a future as an opera singer. She had just graduated from the University of Massachusetts, and she brought her talent as a soprano to the Juilliard School of Music for more training. Working during the day as an editorial assistant and test administrator for a publisher, she put her voice to work at night in major roles in Figaro, La Boheme and The Magic Flute at the Amato Opera Company and the Henry Street Music School. “I did a lot of Puccini, a lot of Mozart, and a little bit of Verdi,” she said.

She auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera Company and was offered the opportunity of further training, partially subsidized by the Met, in Europe. But marriage and motherhood intervened, and Maggie returned to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in the early 1970's to work on a Ph.D. in musicology and voice.

Maggie in a characteristic pose
in the comfortable Family Room

Moving to the charming town of Wales in 1971 with her then husband, a school administrator, and her young daughter, Maggie launched a career as a music instructor and choral director, first in the Massachusetts school system and then in the Mansfield, Connecticut system. She also mentored college musicians at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, and in the '80's and early '90's she directed dozens of musical comedies, including "Annie," "Cinderella," and "Calamity Jane," at the Monson Summer Theater and other summer theaters in Massachusetts.

In 1998 Maggie started her B&B, intending like many in the area to capitalize on the popularity of the world-famous Brimfield Antique Show in Brimfield, Massachusetts, three miles away.

But two years later life took an unexpected turn.

Maggie and a friend were touring in the Greek Islands, and, Maggie recounted, “during a windstorm while I was sunbathing on the desk of our ship an iron deck chair flew up and hit me in the head.” She suffered a concussion and serious eye damage.

Back home the need for therapy made the resumption of her teaching career too difficult. So she started a correspondence course in interior design with the Sheffield School of Design in Manhattan, eventually earning credentials from the American Society of Interior Designers.

Her design experience is obvious to visitors to her B&B, known as The Cora Needham House, named for the woman whose father built the house in 1846 and who was born in it in 1866. The downstairs rooms of the 10-room house are remarkable for colorful fabrics and furniture, art works, and a plethora of collections of precious objects displayed in cabinets and on trays. To describe Maggie's decorating style for these rooms, words like "gorgeous," "opulent" and "lush" come to mind. The decorating style is somewhat simpler for the four bedrooms, and it is varied, as suggested by their titles--"Nantucket Nautical," "Parisian Toile," "Safari," and "Country Charm."

Maggie in her living room, where she displays
art works and treasures from her world travels

Sometimes a B&B is nothing more than a place to stay overnight, enjoy a home-cooked breakfast and get on your way. Maggie has gone well beyond this formula. Her busiest time of the year coincides with the weeklong Brimfield antique fairs in May, July and September. But at other times, she said, “You don’t draw a crowd to Wales unless you have something to offer.”

So she has organized special “women’s weeks” and workshops for women who “love to get away with their best friends." These special occasions are organized around physical conditioning ("Spa"), cooking classes, financial planning, beginning art classes, garden and horticultural design, hot-air ballooning, and books, to list just some of the themes. Maggie's professional chef can provide candelight dinners for those who prefer to forgo going out for dinner in one of the many nearby restaurants.

Last year Maggie built an outbuilding that she calls the Barn, because it looks like one. Actually it is a three-story structure with flexible uses: a second-floor common room for large groups, a loft for sleeping extra guests, and a lower level that could be used as a garage. When her B&B is fully booked, Maggie sleeps in the Barn.

But now a new career beckons. “In order to foster my design career," Maggie says, "I need to be near an affluent area where people need a designer. Out here in the country, there isn’t enough need. And there’s also a chance of reviving my singing career, and of course, being closer to my daughters.”

Maggie confided that it has long been her secret wish to sing an operatic role in a setting suggesting dissipation of some sort (it wouldn't do these days for her to be holding a cigarette) and wearing a spectacular gown, long and decolleté (very decolleté). "Too late for that, I guess," she says. If you saw Maggie in person, you'd say "Indeed not."

Maggie's B&B can be seen on her web site (Maggie took the pictures for it herself), at www.coraneedhamhouse.com.