Ann Hutt Browning

Ann Hutt Browning

June 2, 1935 - January 15, 2011 Ann Hutt Browning has passed away. She was born in England in 1935, Ann Hutt was brought to the United States in the late summer of 1940, escaping the German bombing of London. With her mother and younger brother, David, Ann grew up in Pasadena, California, where she attended Westridge School, a day school for girls. In 1952, she traveled across the country by train to Boston to study at Radcliffe College, where she majored in English literature, studying religion and psychology as well.

For one year following graduation from Radcliffe, Ann worked in the office of McGeorge Bundy, then dean of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Returning to California to take an M.A. at the Claremont Graduate Schools, specializing in psychology, guidance and counseling, Ann accepted in 1958 a position at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, where she met Preston M. Browning, Jr., then an English instructor at the University of Missouri. They were married in 1959.

The following academic year Ann spent at Berea College in Kentucky, where Preston taught freshman English while she served as dean of freshman women. In 1960, Ann began a twenty-year residency in Chicago. While Preston pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, Ann held positions at several settlement houses in a largely Hispanic section of the city, assisting immigrant mothers and children from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America in adjusting to life in a large U.S. city. It was during this period-1961 to 1970-that Ann gave birth to and nurtured four children: Katie, Sarah, Rachel, and Preston III.

Beginning in 1972, Ann held an administrative post with the Health and Hospitals Governing Commission of Cook County, where she had oversight of several departments handling such matters as admissions, records, and housing for nursing students. After an academic year in Yugoslavia where Preston taught American literature and Ann taught conversational English, Ann served as Associate Director of Student Health at the University of Chicago.

When the family moved to Loudoun County, Virginia, in 1980, Ann decided to study architecture, fulfilling a life-long ambition, even before enrolling at Catholic University, she began designing passive-solar, energy-efficient houses, some of which won statewide awards. Always a passionate lover of the natural world, Ann strove to create human habitations which blended with the natural environment.

When Ann and Preston returned to Chicago in 1992, Ann became involved in efforts to restore housing in Woodlawn, a blighted area on Chicago's southside. Perhaps her most significant accomplishment at that time was collaborating with church leaders to establish a community-supported "small school" in Woodlawn. Beginning with a kindergarten and two first-grade classes, the school today has classes through eight grade and has been designated a "model school" by the Chicago Board of Education.

After Preston's retirement from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1998, the couple moved to Ashfield, Massachusetts, and established Wellspring House, a retreat for writers and artists. Here Ann served on several of the town's committees, including finance and space utilization. As had been true in both Chicago and Leesburg, Virginia, Ann, a dedicated Episcopalian, was elected to the vestry of the local Episcopal church, St. John's, once serving as senior warden.

Soon after the move to Massachusetts, Ann and Preston began annual visits to Nicaragua as members of the Solentiname, Nicaragua, Friendship Group of Western Massachusetts. On the islands of Solentiname live families of campesino painters, whose works are brought to New England for sale with the proceeds returned to the islands for projects in health care and education. After Ann designed a large casa taller (workshop) where the artists can work and exhibit their creations, one family that had come to greatly admire Ann and had recently lost their own mother began to call Ann "Madre."

For years Ann had written poetry and in 2009 a volume of her poems entitled Deep Landscape Turning was published by the Ebbotson Street Press.

Daniela Gioseffi, a New York City poet, has described Ann Browning as "a lovely, smart, sensitive and very productive person."

Ann is survived by her husband, Preston M. Browning, Jr., of Ashfield, Mass., by her brother and sister-in-law, David M. Hutt and Valorie Hutt, of Anton Chico, New Mexico, and by her children, Katharine H. Browning of Brooklyn, N.Y., Sarah G. Browning of Washington, D.C., Rachel C. Browning of Portland, or and Preston M. Browning, III, also of Portland; and five grandchildren: Benjamin Browning, Hazel Tallent, Grace Browning, Samuel Browning, and Dakota DeAndrade.


This obituary was originally published in the Culpeper StarExponent.