Alice Bean Brown, who taught English at the East Hampton Middle School for nine years, died at the Swedish Medical Center in Denver early on the morning of Aug. 30 after a stroke. She was 81.
Mrs. Brown loved teaching, her family said, not only in East Hampton but also at the Nightingale-Bamford School and the Lycée Français in Manhattan. She was fluent in French and had learned Latin, which, they said, she tried to teach her children, but without success.
She was born on May 2, 1939, in Jaffrey, N.H., the eldest of six children of Delcie David Bean, known as Jack, and Margaret Crane Bean. She had a happy childhood there among her siblings and both Bean and Crane cousins and family members. The Beans, parents and children, enjoyed many blueberry-picking expeditions, after which her mother would make pies, which all her life remained one of her favorite things to eat.
She graduated with a B.A. in English from Wellesley College, picking up French and Latin along the way, then went to work as a receptionist at Harvard Law School, where she met David Warfield Brown, who survives. They married on Feb. 29, 1964, in Jaffrey. The couple spent much of their life together in Manhattan and, from 1976 to 1994, in East Hampton Village, where their two children grew up. They are Sarah Alice Brown, an attorney in Denver, and Peter Bean Brown, an assistant pastor at Friendship Presbyterian Church in Taipei, Taiwan. Mrs. Brown participated in a weekly Bible-study phone session with her son there.
In East Hampton, she liked going to the beach with her family and bicycling with them to Snowflake for soft ice cream. She was active at the children's schools in the P.T.A. and as a volunteer for the Ladies Village Improvement Society, and could often be seen at the East Hampton Library, Guild Hall, and BookHampton. The family were members of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church.
After the Browns sold their Huntting Lane house, they traveled between Taos, N.M., where Mrs. Brown volunteered at the Taos Retirement Community, and New York City, leaving there in 2017 for Denver to be near their daughter. They chose Taos because of its climate, beauty, and culture, Ms. Brown said.
Her children said their mother loved history, politics (she and her own mother both liked to read biographies of U.S. presidents); art, theater, religion, Greek mythology, word games, and the card game Pounce. She played the piano beautifully, they said, and "enjoyed music and studying its history, singing at the piano with her family, and listening to classical music and the Beatles." She was particularly passionate about reading, they said. Before she died she had reached the middle of "War and Peace" and had just finished "Where the Crawdads Sing."
Mrs. Bean was deeply loved and touched many lives with her positivity, generous spirit, kindness, thoughtfulness, strength, and love, said her family. In addition to her husband, daughter, and son, two brothers, Delcie Bean of Dublin, N.H., and Chris Bean of Jaffrey, survive, as do two sisters, Ellen Bean of Toronto and Betsy Bean of Baltimore. Nineteen nieces and nephews survive as well. Her brother Mark Bean of Nelson, N.H., died before her.
Mrs. Brown was cremated. The family held a remembrance ceremony at the Denver Botanical Garden on a snowy day early last month. Memorial donations have been suggested for the Foundation for Peripheral Neuropathy, 485 Half Day Road, Suite 350, Buffalo Grove, IL 60089.
