Margaret Edwards-Brown, a longtime Claremonter, died on September 27, 2012 at the Mount San Antonio Gardens retirement community, where she had lived for the last 10 years. 

Ms. Edwards-Brown was born on July 5, 1924 in McLouth, Kansas to Harold and Ellwyn Steeper. The daughter of a banker and a homemaker, she grew up with one younger brother and a proud family legacy.

Ms. Edwards-Brown was the great-niece of Orville and Wilbur Wright, the inventors of the airplane. She knew Orville throughout her youth and was quite proud of her famous uncles, participating in many Wright Brothers events throughout her life. 

As a college freshman, Ms. Edwards-Brown left McLouth for Baldwin, Kansas, where she attended Baker University. When her family moved to Lawrence, Kansas, she transferred to Kansas University, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music education.

While at Kansas University, she met her first husband, Robert Woolf Edwards, who was studying to be a physician. They were married in 1946, with Uncle Orville Wright in attendance, and had their first child Paul in 1948, followed by a second child, Cynthia, in 1952.

They moved west later that year, first to San Diego and then, in 1954, to west Los Angeles, where they lived for the next 8 years. In 1962, they moved inland to Claremont, where Dr. Edwards became one of the physicians for the Claremont Colleges. 

Ms. Edwards-Brown had a lifelong love of music, from classical to jazz. She enjoyed singing and playing piano, and delighted in performing with her husband and 2 children in a barbershop quartet known as The Edchords. The Edwards family also enjoyed traveling and once spent an entire summer touring through the United States and Canada in their RV.

Faith was also central to Ms. Edwards-Brown’s life. She was an original member of the Claremont Methodist church until 1970, when her spiritual interests led her to the Quakers (Religious Society of Friends), of which she was a core member for the rest of her life.

Dr. Edwards died at 56 in 1981. By that time, Ms. Edwards-Brown was an active Jungian analyst, having attended Claremont Graduate University and Pitzer College for her master’s degree in educational psychology and received certification through the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles. She had a private practice until 2002, counseling clients in Claremont and Los Angeles.

Ms. Edwards-Brown traveled avidly, from the Galapagos Islands to Europe, and even studied briefly at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. In October of 1990, she met the next love of her life, Robert James Sidford Brown, in a folk dance group. They wed on February 13, 1993 and remained happily married for the rest of her life.

Mr. Brown worked in research as a physicist with Chevron for 33 years. Since retirement, he has worked in research with colleagues at the University of Bologna, Italy. The couple lived in Claremont until moving to Mt. San Antonio Gardens in 2002.

Ms. Edwards-Brown continued to live an active life up until the very end, traveling this past June to Dayton, Ohio to attend a commemoration of the centennial of Wilbur Wright’s Death.

 “My mother was a person of many dimensions,” her son Paul said. “She had a rich life full of discovery, love and growth.”

Ms. Edwards-Brown is survived her husband, Bob Brown, by her 2 children, Paul and Cynthia Edwards, and by her grandchildren, Brian and Leana Edwards.

Services will be held on October 20 at 2 p.m. at the Claremont Friends Meeting House, 727 Harrison Ave., Claremont.