Lee Catherine BROWN

BROWN, Lee Catherine Of Hancock, NH and Cambridge, MA, died on the first of November, just shy of her 79th birthday. Lee was an extraordinary woman, who instantly beguiled anyone who met her and was inevitably beloved by anyone fortunate enough to know her. Throughout her life, she shone forth as an exemplar of morality, decency, kindness, character, charm, humor, courage, wisdom, and

beauty.

For much of Lee's childhood, she lived in an 18th century house by the Sakonnet River in Tiverton, Rhode Island and these were idyllic years spent in what was to her, a magical landscape of farmland and ocean. When schoolwork and family chores allowed the time, she would ride an ornery horse over fields leading down to the tidal river. On summer afternoons, she would take a book and her lunch and drift across a nearby pond in a small rowboat.

From Tiverton, Lee would go first to New York and Barnard College, and from there to Cambridge, where, as a young woman, she somehow managed to cook in two restaurants while attending law school and raising young children. Nothing would ever be as important to her as those children, even after they were old enough to have children of their own.

Though slowed in midlife by an unyielding and debilitating condition, she would work for 35 years in Massachusetts and New Hampshire as a lawyer for those in need and as a mediator for the many who benefitted from her quiet magnetism and her standard of graciousness and fairness. Couples who arrived at her office angry and estranged would more than once leave holding hands, having been gently reminded of what they had shared and would continue to share with their children. And her commitment to fairness extended to the matter of billing: for those who might struggle to pay, there would be no bill at all and for those well able to pay there would be a bill so modest that several would complain it was too low.

Lee had a gift for starting and nurturing indoor plants (some, like her Norfolk Island Pine, would thrive for decades) and took equal enjoyment from planning and planting her gardens. As the family's Nature Officer, she shared her considerable knowledge of the natural world, raised chickens from the embryo up, refused to disparage even pesty squirrels, and loved her canine companions from The Toad to Alice. Hearkening back to her days in the rowboat, she came to love piloting her

bright yellow kayak on the ponds and rivers of Ashby and the Monadnock Region.

Widely regarded as a matchless cook, Lee also knew everything about cooking. If the New York Times uncovered a rare herb favored in a country no one had ever heard of, she had already tried it out. She would read cookbooks the way some people read novels, for fun, though she would also read novels and memoirs and travelogues and anthropology and beyond. Reading was always her greatest pleasure.

Lee was unwavering in her devotion to the cause of social justice. She was there in 1963 to bear witness for civil rights when Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. and she was there over 60 years later, to demonstrate against a cruel and lawless administration this past June at the No Kings rally in Peterborough.

Her truest calling, though, was as a beloved spouse, mother, stepmother, grandmother, and (as the oldest of seven children) a sort of matriarchal sister, as well as a treasured friend to countless. Lee is survived by her companion-in-life, Larry Duberstein; daughters, Nell Brown and Annie Brown; stepdaughter, Jamie Kirby; grandchildren, Sarah, Haddie, Dylan, Luna, and Everly; honorary grandchild, Audrey; brothers, Nick Brown, Chris Brown, and Dominic Brown; sisters-in-law, Marcia

Brown, Deb Cate Brown, and Julia Hanna; and sons-in-law, Kevin Kirby and Joshua Coleman.



"Her like will not be seen again."