Esther Reid Brown
Baltimore junior high school business teacher was a world traveler who was honored by her church
Esther Elizabeth Brown, a retired teacher and world traveler, died in her sleep May 26 at Sunrise Senior Living in Pikesville. She was 105 and had lived in Ashburton for many years.
Born Esther Elizabeth Reid in Norfolk, Va., she the was the daughter of Ernest Reid, who worked in the Navy yard, and Mary Elizabeth Reid, a seamstress. She was a1928 graduate of Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk and received a diploma from the old Miner Normal School, a Washington teachers college founded in 1851 to educate African-American women. She supported herself as an elevator operator at the old Woodward & Lothrop department store as she attended school.
In 1931, she took a job teaching at a one-room school on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in Somerset County.
“She told me she walked the dirt roads to get there,” said her daughter, Stephanie Brown, a Pikesville resident. “Its bathroom was outside, and it was really hard to get supplies. The teachers did what they could to make sure the children had books and paper.”
She taught at the school for several years before moving to Baltimore, where she joined the city public school system and taught elementary subjects at an East Baltimore school.
After her 1940 marriage to Dr. Albert Leyland Laforest, a Trinidad-born physician, she gave up teaching for several years to raise a family.
She then earned a bachelor’s degree in education with honors at what is now Morgan State University, where she joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She was also a secretary in the school’s physical education department. She then taught for 20 years at Houston Wood Junior High School at Calhoun and Baker streets. She taught business education, mathematics and typing, and retired in 1974.
“Mymother traveled forever,” her daughter said. “She was also a devoted grandmother and spent several nights a week at my home helping with my family.”
Mrs. Brown had been an active parishioner of St. Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Church in East Baltimore. After moving to Ashburton’s Lynchester Road in 1960, she joined Our Lady of Lourdes Church. After it closed, she became a member of New All Saints Church.
“She was in the sodality and worked in the church food pantry. She served on the parish council and worked in hospitality,” her daughter said.
In 1982, her church’s sodality members voted her Woman of the Year.
While at her 50th high school reunion, she met her future second husband, Colden L. Brown, a New York City probation officer, who had been a classmate. He had been widowed and she was then divorced. They dated about a year and married in Baltimore. They were married 11 years before his death in 1989.
“They had a wonderful life together and traveled to most every continent,” her daughter said. “Every Sunday, he would say ‘I have to get her out of the kitchen.’ By this he meant they would have dinner every Sunday at Tio Pepe’s.”
Mrs. Brown traveled overseas until she was 95. Her last overseas trip was to Argentina. She rode camels in Egypt and went on a Zimbabwe safari when she was 82. “She is the only person I know who had been to a hospital in Beijing. She was stricken with severe stomach bug and recuperated quickly. She said you can get sick anywhere in the world if you have a gold American Express card,” her daughter said.
She traveled with Globus, the travel company, and with the Maryland Teachers Association.
Mrs. Brown lived at her Ashburton home until 1997, when she moved to the Charlestown Retirement Community, where she lived independently until she was 103.
“She would have a small glass of champagne, a whiskey sour or a glass of wine until last month,” her daughter said. “She loved life and she liked being in the middle of people. She would follow where the activity was. At her last home at Sunrise, the rabbi would come on Friday morning. She would attend the Jewish service because she wanted to be where the activity was.”
She walked with a cane and did her own laundry until she was 103.
A Mass of Christian burial will be offered at 11 a.m. Monday at New All Saints Roman Catholic Church, 4408 Liberty Heights Ave.
In addition to her daughter, survivors include a grandson, Christopher Leyland Howard of Leesburg, Va.; three stepgrandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Her son, Albert Leyland Laforest Jr., died in 1987. Mrs. Brown also considered Ginette Castagne to be her granddaughter.