Edith Edie C Sweeney

“Edie”

Freeport - Edith C. Sweeney died on August 26, 2013 at Mid-Coast Medical Center after a brief illness.

She was 83. Mrs. Sweeney, known to all as Edie, was a long-time pillar of the South Freeport community. She was born in June 1930 in Tarrytown, NY, to Katherine McCurdy Carpenter and William Chase Carpenter. Growing up in Tarrytown and the Bronx, she came to Maine in 1948 to attend Colby College, from which she graduated in 1952. Six months later she married Arthur Sweeney of South Freeport, and moved to the village where she lived for the next 61 years.

Edie was an active member of Freeport Community Services, the Freeport Women’s Club, and the Maine Ostomy Society. Blessed with a beautiful voice, she sang in choirs throughout her life, beginning in high school and then moving on to the Colby Glee Club and the Colby Chapel Choir. She was one of the founders of the choir of the South Freeport Church and a faithful member for decades. The church was one of the centers of her life: she served several times as a deacon and was deeply involved in the work of the Parish Fellowship. Her life in the church is chronicled in Elizabeth Moore's 2002 book "Biography of a Community: the Women of South Freeport Church in the Twentieth Century". Edie was even able to use her ever-handy camera in her role as the book's official photographer.

In her later years she enjoyed spending winters in Arizona with her husband, with occasional visits from grandchildren thrown in. Edie loved to travel. At various times during the 1980s and 1990s she visited the Western and Northern States, the Canadian Provinces, England, Scotland, Israel, the Greek Islands, Hawaii, Turkey and Germany.

In her seventies, Edie became interested in family history and authored and self-published a chronicle of her husband's Army Air Force service in World War 2, an autobiography, and the story of her own wartime years in PS 81 in the Bronx.

She is survived by her husband of 61 years, Arthur; her three daughters, Alice, Liz, and Louise; four grandchildren; and her sister, Carol Carpenter Bisbee of Belfast.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday September 21 at 2:00 Pm at the South Freeport Church, UCC, 98 South Freeport Road, South Freeport, ME with Rev. David Bowling officiating. Please visit www.lindquistfuneralhome.com to share condolences, memories and tributes with Edie’s family.

The family requests that any donations in her memory be made either to the South Freeport Congregational Church, P.O. Box 46, So. Freeport, Maine 04078 OR to Freeport Community Services, P.O. Box 119, Freeport, Maine 04032.