Longtime Wellfleet resident Amy Jo Paine died at her home in Rock Harbor Village in Orleans on June 24, 2025. She was 62. The cause was complications of rheumatoid arthritis, with which Amy had been diagnosed at age 30.
Amy was born on Sept. 9, 1962 in Groton, the fifth of seven children of the late Robert S. and Cynthia Paine. She grew up in Raymond and Hollis, N.H. and spent summers in Wellfleet at Paine’s Campground (now Wellfleet Hollow State Campground) on Old King’s Highway, which her parents founded in 1952. With her beloved black horse, Princess, Amy entertained campers by giving them horseback rides around the campground, for which she charged 25 cents. “Meeting hundreds of campers from all over the world most certainly played a role in developing the friendly and cheerful demeanor she would carry with her through life,” her family wrote in an appreciation.
Amy rode Princess bareback in every Wellfleet Fourth of July parade, with the horse wearing wreaths carefully woven from wild roses. If she wasn’t riding Princess, Amy was running through the back woods barefoot and tanned or ripping around on dirt bikes, always on a mission. She was often the first out on the dance floor, and she most certainly knew the hokey pokey. “With her sense of style and her infectious laugh, she was always easy to spot and hear in a crowd,” wrote her family.
Winters were spent in New Hampshire, where Amy learned to ice skate and did lots of sledding, throwing snowballs, and shoveling. She graduated from Hollis High School in 1980 and went on to study writing and journalism at Cape Cod Community College. In 1984, she married James Gold, and they had two sons, Rob and Dan. The couple divorced in 1993, and Amy later gave birth to a third son, John.
Amy was a devoted mother and homemaker, and her sons loved living at Paine’s Campground year-round. “It was awesome growing up in the campground,” said Dan. “She’d always walk us down to Duck Pond. We could run free. There was this big old-school ooga horn that she would crank up to get us to come home for dinner. ‘You’ve got 10 minutes to get back, or you’re in trouble,’ she would tell us.”
Because of her arthritis, Amy studied herbal remedies and loved her garden, making natural tinctures and wild dandelion and ginger tea to alleviate inflammation. Winter was not her favorite season, but she loved her extended winter visits with son Rob, wife Natalie, and their four boys in Colorado. The mountain sunsets amazed her. If she wasn’t on an adventure in Colorado, she was visiting son John and grandson Landon or sneaking “off the island” to go to a Bruins game with Dan. She was most proud of her grandchildren, who miss her kind heart and gentle soul.
In later years, Amy delighted in cooking, writing short stories, painting sunsets, making seashell jewelry, and telling tall tales by the fire. “It was her poems and birthday jingles everyone looked forward to the most,” the family wrote. “She was a great listener and shoulder to lean on for moral support.”
Amy is survived by her sons, Rob Gold and wife Natalie of Highlands Ranch, Colo., Dan Gold of Wellfleet, and John Higgins of Barnstable; her grandsons, James, Beckett, Nathan, and Everett Gold and Landon Higgins; her sisters, Irene Paine of Yarmouth, Naomi Paine of Wilmington, N.C., and Evelyn Paine of Wellfleet; her brothers, Robert Paine of Wellfleet and William Paine of Mill Valley, Calif.; and dozens of cousins, nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews.
She was predeceased by her sister Sarah Paine Curley.
Services were held on July 9 at Nickerson Funeral Home in Wellfleet.
