LYNN — When lifelong Lynners Edmund Carleton Brown and his wife, Pearl Anderson Brown, relocate to North Carolina this fall, they will leave behind a city that has significantly benefitted from their unyielding spirit of volunteerism for almost a century.
Edmund, 98, and Pearl, 94, have been active participants in the community, through their jobs, their church and the countless organizations they have served in leadership roles.
“I preach that to people: Volunteer,” Pearl says. “You never know what you’re going to get out if it.”
The Browns have received a feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment, as they served on boards at the Lynn Museum, Community Minority Cultural Center, the Massachusetts chapter of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and the Community Brotherhood, among others. They were involved with LynnArts from its inception.
“We try to participate whenever we can,” Pearl said. “I look back on it now and wonder how I was able to do everything.”
Edmund graduated from Lynn English in 1936 and Pearl is a 1941 Classical grad. They met at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and were married in 1942. Edmund served in the U.S. Army for three years and was stationed in the South Pacific during World War II. Pearl attended community college and took courses in tailoring and painting.
After Edmund got out of the Army, the Browns opened a dry-cleaning business on Chestnut Street. They still live in the same building, in the three floors above their former business, where they have been for 70 years.
After they closed the business, Pearl worked as a paraprofessional in Lynn Public Schools and part-time at the Lynn Museum, where she later served on the board. She volunteered with the museum’s educational initiatives, visiting elementary schools in order to bring the museum to students. She is also an accomplished tailor and painter.
Edmund sold insurance and, for the last decade of his working career, was a well-known, highly visible community relations officer for Walmart — the man who showed up with the donation checks.
The Browns have two children — Edmund Carleton Brown, a minister in Pennsylvania, and Deborah Cooke, a retired GE employee in Fayetteville, N.C. They will be living near Deborah and her husband, Charles. The Browns have three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Understandably, the thought of moving from a place that has been home for more than 90 years gives them some trepidation.
“Leaving Lynn is very hard,” Pearl said. “We’ve been involved with so many organizations and know so many people.”
Many of those people bid them a formal farewell at a gathering that, fittingly, was held at the Community Brotherhood on Friday. It was an opportunity to wish the Browns well and thank them for all they have done, while acknowledging that Lynn is losing a true dynamic duo.
