Joan
Mulford Braun passed away peacefully in the company of family at her
home in Shelburne, Vt., on Thursday, February 6, 2025. She was 87.
As
a longtime resident of Charlotte, Joan directed the experiential and
service-learning program, DUO (Do Unto Others), at Champlain Valley
Union High School, from the late 1970s through the 1990s.
Joan
was born in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1937, the eldest of John Mulford
and Virginia Compton Mulford’s four children. As a girl, she
attended the Agnes Irwin School in Bryn Mawr, Pa., and graduated from
the University of Pennsylvania in 1959 with a BA. That year she
married Theodore E. Braun Jr., who was completing medical school at
Penn. They remained happily married for more than 60 years until his
death in October of 2021.
In
1970, Joan and Ted moved to Charlotte, Vt., where they raised their
three sons and were active residents of a town they richly enjoyed
for nearly 50 years. Joan was elected to the Charlotte School Board
in the early 1970s, then pursued a master’s of education at the
University of Vermont. After she received her degree, she joined the
Direction Center at CVU in the fall of 1978. Her leadership of the
DUO program took her around the United States, as a leader in the
then innovative field of experiential public education. Her work —
partnering high school teens with community mentors — brought her
into contact with a great variety of students, people and businesses
throughout Chittenden County, a diversity of humanity and experience
she sought and nourished throughout her life.
After
retiring in 1997, she devoted herself to volunteer work with the
Charlotte Senior Center and the Cathedral Church of St. Paul’s in
Burlington — where she and Ted were engaged members for more than
50 years — and to international travel and the lives of her
expanding family of grandchildren. She deeply enjoyed activities that
brought her into the natural world she so treasured in Vermont; she
walked, gardened, skied, biked, swam and kayaked. She also took great
pleasure in UVM basketball and the vital artistic community in and
around Burlington. Theater, music of all sorts, and the work of local
craft and fine artists elicited her delight and support. In 2016 Joan
and Ted moved to Shelburne, where she maintained a wide circle of
strong friendships that sustained and enriched her.
She’s
survived by her sisters, Margaret Bartholomew of Shelburne and Nancy
Burrill of San Francisco; her sons, Theodore Braun III of Los
Angeles, Michael Braun of Houston, Texas, and Stuart Braun of
Portland, Maine; three daughters in-law, Lori Froeling, Sandra
Hurtado and Colleen Kelly; and her beloved grandchildren, Isabella
Hurtado-Braun, Daniel Hurtado-Braun, Samuel Braun, Lucas Braun and
Grace Braun.
Services
will be held at St. Paul’s Cathedral Church, Burlington, on
February 21 at 1 p.m., with a reception to follow at the Hotel
Champlain. In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory may be made to
the Cathedral Church of St. Paul’s and the Charlotte Public Library.