UNION – Olive M. Brown, 83, died Wednesday, July 7, 2010, at Pen Bay Medical Center, Rockport. Olive was born March 4, 1927, in Montville, to Hazel Edgecomb Pushaw and Harry Parker Campbell. She was educated in Liberty, South Hope and Union schools. She attended nursing school in Portland after graduating from Union High School. She married Basil A. Brown, Sept. 26, 1946, in Camden. She and her husband were childhood sweethearts – a love that continued their entire lives. These two were inseparable. Mr. Brown passed away just 12 days before Mrs. Brown. Most of her married life was devoted to making her house a warm, secure, inviting place for her family. She was well known for her gardening and cooking skills. Entire meals and a full line of desserts were made “from scratch” – her husband particularly enjoyed her fruit pies! Mrs. Brown derived great pleasure from improving and decorating the appearance of her home. She painted rooms, upholstered furniture, hung wallpaper, built stone walkways and walls, and expanded already extensive flower gardens. All these skills were self-taught – no job was too daunting for her. In later years, Mrs. Brown raised 100s of marigolds, a favorite plant, seedlings in her greenhouse to be planted outside her home which she named “Marigold Farm.” Mrs. Brown worked occasionally outside the home in order to purchase “extras” for her children, buy their school clothes, or to further their education. In the early years of her marriage, she raked blueberries and worked at a West Rockport canning factory to help support her young family. She was self-sacrificing always. She was employed at Hill’s Nursing Home, Union, to finance her daughter’s college education; and likewise, Van Baalen’s clothing factory to supplement her son’s college years. One of the only pastimes she pursued for her own enjoyment was annual deer hunting with her sister, Marie. The two sisters became well known locally for their hunting prowess. They hunted every day of the November hunting season, regardless of weather, marching through woods, meadows, swamps and hills; earning the respect of skeptical male hunters. Often times, a deer was bagged by one or both of the sisters, launching many exciting, and usually comical, hunting stories to be told and retold with much drama and many laughs. Mrs. Brown was predeceased by her husband, Basil Brown; her sister, Marie Fuller; and her parents, Hazel Pushaw and Harry Campbell. Survivors include a daughter, Bonnie Packard and her husband, James, of Union; son, Professor Scott Brown of Portland; grandson, Christopher Packard and his wife, Pamela, of Union; granddaughter, Kali Mitchell and her husband, Adam, of Hope; four great-grandchildren, Taylor Packard of Union, Emma Mitchell of Hope, Jennifer Baum of Union and Morgan Baum of Union; sisters, Grace Miller and her husband, Douglas, of Thomaston, and Brenda Foster of Pittston; and brothers, John Pushaw and his fiancee, Diane Laing, of Warren, Michael Campbell and his wife, Paula, of Chelsea, and Ricky Campbell of Augusta. Other survivors include three special sisters-in-law, Bebe Waterman of South Thomaston, Peggy Lincoln of Union and Joan Dussault of Chelmsford, Mass. Visiting hours for Mrs. Brown will be 6-8 p.m. Thursday, July 15, at Hall Funeral Home, 949 Main St., Waldoboro. A graveside service will be held for Olive and Basil Brown 1 p.m. Sunday, July 18, at East Union Cemetery. In lieu of flowers for Mrs. Brown, donations may be made in her name to Camden Rockport Animal Rescue League or Humane Society of Knox County.
OLIVE M. BROWN
