Helen "Becky" D. Koulouris Obituary (1953 - 2011)

Brunswick - Helen "Becky” Demetra Koulouris age 58 of Brunswick and Lubec died Thursday, December 1 at Midcoast Hospital in Brunswick. She was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts January 1 1953 daughter of George and Ethel Scrufutis Koulouris. She attended Wakefield, Massachusetts’s schools, and was a graduate of Wakefield High School. Ms. Koulouris received the Bachelor of Arts degree from the Honors Program of the University of Maine in Orono in 1976. In 1973 she married Vernon Campbell Grant then of Bar Harbor and they had two children together. They were divorced in 1987. On June 30, 1990, she married Edward L Hawes, then of Springfield Illinois, under a century-old oak at his place on Cobscook Bay near Lubec. From 1978 to 1982 Ms. Koulouris taught in the Freeport elementary schools. From 1981 to 1986 she was Assistant Director, then Director of the Harraseeket Project, a major living history program of the Freeport Historical Society and the Audubon Society supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. She became the Environmental Studies Coordinator at Bowdoin College in 1988 and served there for fifteen years. Then for several years she managed special projects for the Maine Coast Heritage Trust and the Brunswick/Topsham Land Trust. She was an accomplished grant writer and helped various organizations obtaining project funding from the Maine Humanities Council, Quimby Family Foundation, Maine Community Foundation’s Belvedere Fund, The Land Trust Alliance, Maine Society of Landscape Architects, Maine Department of Agriculture and the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust. These organizations all benefited from her deep commitment to land conservation, historic preservation, and environmental education. Selected publications include "Salt Marsh Agriculture” which appeared in the journal Agricultural History in 1989 (joint authorship), "Land Trusts and Farm Management Models” coauthored with Edward Hawes in 1989, "Between the River and the [Merrymeeting] Bay,” an inventory of ecological and historical resources prepared for the City of Bath, also coauthored with Edward Hawes in 1988. Ms. Koulouris was a board member of the Merrymeeting Arts Center at the time of her death. She had served on the board of the Maine Olmsted Alliance for Parks and Landscapes 2005 to 2010. She was active in exhibit development for Lubec Landmarks’ Historic McCurdy’s Herring Smokehouse site in the past ten years. Becky was a fantastic cook, and loved rediscovering her ancestral Greek culinary traditions. As a member of the woman’s society at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Lewiston, she enjoyed helping prepare pastries for the Greek Festival in August and the December sale. People at the Unitarian Universalist Church she often attended with her husband came to know her abilities, as well. Surviving is her husband Edward Hawes of Brunswick. Children: Nicholas Coleman Grant and his wife Mary Oliver Wolfe of Cambridge, Massachusetts and Anne Shields Hopkins and her husband Rafi Hopkins of Eastport. A brother Paul Koulouris of East Sandwich Massachusetts. A sister Joann Sparks of Wakefield, Massachusetts. She is also survived by a beloved grandchild Cecilia Maree Hopkins of Eastport. There will be a memorial service within the next 2-3 weeks, the details of which will be published. The family requests that memorial donations be sent to either the Downeast Coast Conservancy at P. O. Box 760, Machias, ME 04654 or Lubec Landmarks, P. O. Box 422, Lubec, ME 04652. Arrangements are by Stetson’s Funeral Home, 12 Federal St., Brunswick, ME where memorial condolences may be expressed at stetsonsfuneralhome.com