Lynn Elaine "Gathercole" Browne

Lynn Elaine Browne (nee Gathercole) passed away on January 25, 2026, near Boston, Massachusetts, at the age of 79.

Family

Lynn was the daughter of the late George and Helen Gathercole, and was raised in Port Credit, Ontario, Canada. She attended Port Credit Secondary School, was valedictorian for her 1964 graduating class, and after obtaining her Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Economics at the University of Western Ontario, went on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to earn her Ph.D.

Lynn will be sadly missed by her sister Georgia (Rory) McCormick, nephews Brian (Sarah) and Roy McCormick, niece Erin (Brad) Howard, and great nieces Molly, Ellie, Evie, and Kora. Lynn will be forever remembered by her sister-in-law Marjorie Browne Burdette, niece Valerie (Mike) Burdette, nephews Joel (Melissa), Eric (Melissa), and Graham (Jennifer) Burdette, and great nieces and nephews Isaac, Luke, Hannah, Miles, Emily, Olivia, Madeline, Josephine, Isabelle, and Theodore. Lynn was pre-deceased by her beloved mother-in-law Helen Browne, sister-in-law Susan Browne, and brother-in-law William Burdette.

Lynn met, fell in love with, and in 1971 married her husband, Stephen J. Browne, at MIT where he was a fellow Ph.D. student in the economics department. They established their first home in Weston, MA, and then moved to Medfield, MA, in 1992 to pursue their joint passions for horses, dogs, wildlife, and preserving open space.

Avocations

Lynn was an avid equestrian. A longtime member of the Norfolk Hunt Club, where she became Master of Fox Hounds, she thrilled at leading large fields of horses and riders over miles of country and dozens of stiff stone walls in pursuit of fox hounds. She owned and rode a powerful portfolio of fox hunters including quarter horses, Morgans, mustangs, and German warmbloods, especially her pride and joy Amos, her first horse Boy George, and her last equine partner JoJo.

Lynn was a talented instrument rated pilot. For years she flew her plane to her two lakeside properties in remote mountainous Maine, usually with her two dogs on board. She also flew up and down the East Coast, to her native country of Canada, and as far as Kentucky and Florida to attend horse competitions and stock car racing events.

Lynn adored her many dogs, usually owning two at a time, often beautiful athletic Standard Poodles. She treasured taking them on road trips to Canada and Baltimore for Christmas and Thanksgiving and on flights to Nantucket to run the beaches in the winter.

Lynn loved the farm in Medfield that she bought and restored and named Pinecroft Farm. She shared with friends and neighbors its miles of trails for riding horses and walking dogs. The farm also was home to abundant wildlife, including a profusion of birds, waterfowl, and foxes and deer (that dined on her rhododendrons). She placed the farm and adjacent land under permanent conservations restrictions – to protect it forever.

Lynn prized nature and the outdoors and was active in preserving open spaces. She established a non-profit for this purpose, worked to preserve 100's of acres of land, and collaborated with open space groups such as the Norfolk Hunt Club and The Trustees of Reservations.

Lynn was a deep thinker, an accomplished researcher, an excellent teacher, a brilliant student, an inspiring mentor of the next generation of economists, a serious scholar, a prodigious reader, a prolific writer, and a fine cook. She worshiped for years at Grace Church of Dover, where she served on the Board of Directors and as treasurer and greatly enjoyed the fellowship of the Women's Study Group.

Professional Life

In her professional life, Lynn worked productively more than thirty years at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, where she retired as EVP and Economic Advisor, followed by a decade teaching Central Banking at Brandeis International Business School. She was an excellent thinker who made many impressive contributions throughout her career.

At the Fed, Lynn was unmatched in her wide range of impacts on economic thought and economic policy, including as co-author of the famous Boston Fed study of racial discrimination in home mortgage markets. She was the impetus for the Working Cities project that spurred efforts to revitalize New England's old industrial centers. As director of the bank's research department, she led the Boston bank's preparations for the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee Meetings that set national monetary policy and interest rates.

Lynn was the chronicler and reigning expert about the New England economy and the famous Massachusetts Economic Miracle, which was the envy of every other region that sought to emulate that 20th Century success story. She was deeply involved in addressing the serious New England real estate crisis of 1990. As always, she was prescient about the onset of the 2006 to 2010 foreclosure crisis that began to occur earlier in Massachusetts than the rest of the country; her community development department was the first to observe that economic tsunami within the entire Federal Reserve system.

Lynn established the New England Public Policy center. She created the New England Economic Adventure, an interactive multi-media museum for educating high school students around the region. She helped found the New England economic study group with the Kennedy school which was the precursor to the current influential MassBenchmarks. She tackled important and complex regional and national energy issues and was responsible for collecting and publishing regional economic data.

Memorial

Even though Lynn became a US citizen and made her home in the Boston area, she retained strong and warm relationships with friends from Canada from her youth and college years and with her extended family through frequent visits at holidays.

Lynn will be missed most of all by her loving and devoted husband of 54 years, for whom no words are sufficient to express either the heartbreak of the loss or the joy of all the many wonderful years together that preceded it.

A service in Lynn's remembrance will be held at Grace Church in Dover, Massachusetts, on March 7 at 11AM. Note that Lynn loved flowers.