Obituary of Louise Gross Minot

BRUNSWICK – Louise Gross Minot passed peacefully Sunday, April 5, 2020, footsteps from where she was born in Brunswick on July 26, 1921. She was raised by her parents, Alfred Otto Gross and Edna Grace Gross, along with brothers William and Thomas, at 11 Boody Street where her family was a mainstay of the Bowdoin College community. Brunswick served as her family’s base camp for expeditions to the Bay of Fundy, Panama, Ecuador and other far-off places. She attended Brunswick schools through high school where she was captain of the swim team and tennis club, recreations that lasted her a lifetime. As a senior, she achieved the distinction of Golden Eaglet in the Girl Scouts. While at Longfellow Primary School, her art teacher inspired her greatest passion, becoming an artist. Louise attended Smith College, majoring in Biology, and she graduated in 1942. She audited a course at Bowdoin College and liked to think of herself as Bowdoin’s “first co-ed.” She also took a post-grad year at Columbia studying genetics. During the later years of the war, she taught biology and chemistry at the Chatham Hall school in Virginia. In 1943, she met and the next year married Otis Northrop Minot who was stationed with the Navy in Brunswick. They moved to Massachusetts and raised their three children in Lexington. They lived there until 1981, with three years in between in La Jolla, California. During these years, she focused on her sons’ upbringing and education, including being head of the Parents Association at the Browne and Nichols School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and den mother for the La Jolla Cub Scouts. In 1981, she and Otis retired and moved back to Brunswick, living on Mere Point next to the cottage she summered at in her youth. With Otis’ passing in 1994, she married Vernon Westcott in 1997. She and Vernon lived in Lincoln, Massachusetts until he died, and Louise then returned to Mere Point to pursue her artistic endeavors and to live among many cherished friends. Throughout her life, Louise was a relentless artist who never settled into a particular art form or genre. Her bliss was not in being but rather in becoming an artist, and the mid-coast was her favorite subject. She even had her politically targeted cartoons of local interest published in the town paper. She was an active member of the Casco Bay Art League, with five solo shows after her 90th birthday. Louise was always an extrovert and an active correspondent, maintaining friendships both locally and around the world. She devotedly got her 2019 Christmas cards mailed early, “just in case.” Louise is survived by her sons Edward O. of Palmerston North, New Zealand; Alfred H. of Brunswick, Maine; and David T.W. of Jericho, Vermont; their wives Midge, Cynthia and Marjorie, respectively; sister-in-law Abby; six grandchildren; nine great grandchildren; and 15 nieces and nephews. A celebration of her life is planned in Brunswick this summer. To leave a note of condolence or share a memory for that occasion, please write to 1082 Mere Point Road, Brunswick ME 04011 or send an email to halminot@gmail.com.