Kathleen Elsie Kelley

On Monday, November 7, 2022, Kathleen Elsie Kelley, a beloved mother and grandmother, passed away at age seventy-six. Born on July 4, 1946, to Stanford and Helen Brown, Kathleen graduated from the Greely Institute in Cumberland, Maine. She grew up riding horses and helping her father on the farm in her hometown of North Yarmouth. Like him, Kathleen was naturally good with animals of all kinds. Along with her sisters, cousins, and children, she helped care for beehives and process honey, and later her parents' farm became Brown's Apiaries.

Kathleen loved watching the wild birds in the Maine woods, drawn to her window with a bird feeder. Watching a herd of wild turkeys and deer compete for food during the long winters in her yard in Five Islands was a source of entertainment. Kathleen loved reading veterinary books by James Herriot, and watching the television show, All Creatures Great and Small.

She had an arts and crafts gift shop called Strawberry Fields in Damariscotta for several years and her business did very well. She worked the night shift at Midcoast Hospital in Brunswick for years as an administrative staff member and welcomed any who needed help. She also worked at the Five Islands Lobster Company and Bath Area Family YMCA front desk with her daughter Michelle. Kathleen helped lobster with her beloved husband Leon for years on their boat, the Orissa, whereby her children and grandchildren loved to join them. Kathleen delivered cooked lobster orders to the nearby Sagadahoc Bay Campground during the summer, where people from around the world would run up to her big red truck asking for lobster as if she were selling ice cream; they loved talking to the lobstering couple.

When needed during a difficult time, she lobstered full time as Captain of the Orissa, which she continued to do after her husband's untimely death in 2013. In 2019 she went to live at Fallbrook Woods in Portland after being diagnosed with dementia. The staff there became her family, and Kathleen reminded them often how much she loved them and gave frequent hugs.

Our family would like to express our profound gratitude to the staff at Fallbrook Woods, as well as Compassus Hospice, for the care and compassion they have provided.

Kathleen was best known for her smile, laughter, wry sense of humor, fierce independence, sense of adventure and kindness. She loved her children and was ecstatic the day she became a grandmother. Now a grandmother of ten, she will be sorely missed.

Kathleen is predeceased by her husband Leon Kelley of 14 years, married October 31, 1999, on the coast of Five Islands, Maine. She is also predeceased by her oldest daughter Laura Rawnsley (1984), her father Stanford (2015), and mother Helen (1999). Kathleen is now at peace with her beloved husband, daughter, and parents.

She is survived by her sisters, Anne Brown and Sandra LeFebvre; her children, Craig Rawnsley, Daryl Rawnsley, Robyn Rawnsley-Dutil, Bryan Kelley, and Michelle Bujnowski; and also by her grandchildren, Madison, Brennan, and Lily Rawnsley, Morgen and Evan Dutil, Ava and Laura Kelley, and Ethan, Michael, and Isla Bujnowski. A memorial and burial service will be held in the spring of 2023, date TBD, at Mountainside Cemetery in Georgetown, Maine.