Gudrun (Birch) Howe

Ancestors

Descendants

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Biography

Gudrun was born Gudrun Adele Birch in 1905. She grew up in Middleton and Beverly, Massachusetts, and studied piano and music during her school years. She taught music for several years at the Park School in Brookline, Massachusetts. She married Dr. Henry Forbush Howe in 1931. When he proposed to her, he offered her a choice of an engagement ring or a grand piano, and she chose the piano. They initially lived in Boston, but moved to Cohasset, Massachusetts when Dr. Howe took over his father's medical practice there. She continued to play and teach piano through the years. She gave birth to Walter Bjerke Howe in 1937. She also maintained an interest in art and studied painting. She wrote the music for a musical comedy titled "March Meeting," which was performed in Cohasset in at least three separate productions through the years. She gave birth to Oliver Hunt Howe in 1949. After her divorce in about 1963, she worked as a director of volunteers for several Boston hospitals, while living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After retiring, she moved to Arlington, Massachusetts and was very active in the Unitarian-Universalist Church there. In her 90's, she moved to an Assisted Living facility in Arlington, where she played the piano every morning and taught painting classes. She died in Arlington at age 99 after a brief illness.

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Sources

1. ↑ First-hand information as remembered by her son Walt Howe, Sunday, March 8, 2015.

See also:

• "Ancestry.com, 1940 United States Federal Census (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012), Ancestry.com, http://www.Ancestry.com, Year: 1940; Census Place: Cohasset, Norfolk, Massachusetts; Roll: T627_1626; Page: 3B; Enumeration District: 11-83."