FREEPORT — Edith C. Sweeney, 83, died Aug. 26 at Mid-Coast Medical Center, after a brief illness.

Sweeney was a long-time pillar of the South Freeport community. She was born in June 1930, in Tarrytown, N.Y., to Katherine and William 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.

Sweeney 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 Colby Chapel Choir. She was a co-founder of the choir of 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.” Sweeney was also the book’s official photographer.

In her later years, she enjoyed spending winters in Arizona with her husband. Sweeney loved to travel. She visited the western and northern U.S., the Canadian provinces, England, Scotland, Israel, the Greek islands, Hawaii, Turkey and Germany.

In her seventies, Sweeney authored and self-published a chronicle of her husband’s Army Air Force service in World War II, and the story of her own wartime years in Public School 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.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Sept. 21 at the South Freeport Church, UCC, 98 South Freeport Road, South Freeport, with Rev. David Bowling officiating. 

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

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