"Bonnie Graham MacDougall, of Ithaca and Alexandria, Professor Emeritus at Cornell University, died unexpectedly on November 26, 2017. She was 76 years old. Bonnie was born to Joseph London Graham and Myrtle Agnes Fivehouse Graham on July 2, 1941 in Teaneck, New Jersey. She moved to Alexandria, VA with her family when she was 8 years old where she spent the rest of her childhood and where she later spent much of her retirement.

Bonnie graduated from Cornell University as an undergraduate in 1962 and completed her graduate work earning her Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1973. She met her husband, Robert "Scotty" Duncan MacDougall at Cornell University and was married in 1962. Their marriage was the beginning of a nearly 25-year personal and academic partnership, in which they collaborated on research and cross-trained each other in their respective disciplines. Although Robert predeceased Bonnie in 1987, Bonnie continued their collaborative work and published a digital collection of Robert's photographs, Beyond the Taj: Architectural Traditions and Landscape Experience in South Asia. At the time of her death Bonnie was completing a second digital collection, Depicting the Sri Lankan Vernacular."