Ann Brewer; sailor rode waves of adventure, independence

Ann (Wickes) Brewer came of age at a time when many parents believed that sending a daughter to college was a waste of time and money. Her well-to-do parents were no exception.

Yet Mrs. Brewer was independent enough to be accepted at Bennington College in Vermont without their approval. Her parents "disinherited her" for about a year, said her daughter, Anita W. Brewer-Siljeholm of Manchester-by-the-Sea. "Mother's life was marked by privileged beginnings," she said, "but her own life was one of remarkable independence, a taste for adventure, a profound commitment to family traditions and civic leadership."

A lifelong sailor and a racer known along the Atlantic coast, Mrs. Brewer passed on her love of the sea to generations of young people in different ways. For many years, as a member of the Board of Trustees of Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, she took voyages aboard sailing classroom square-rigged ships.

Mrs. Brewer, who won numerous sailing trophies with her former husband, died of heart failure on Nov. 11 at her home in Manchester-by-the-Sea. She was 84.

"Ann was a remarkable woman," said Rafe Parker, former president of the Sea Education Association and now of McMinnville, Ore., recalling that Mrs. Brewer had been on a square-rigged sailing classroom ship in the Pacific as recently as 2002. After the once-exclusively male New York Yacht Club began admitting women in the early 1980s, Parker said, Mrs. Brewer was among the first to be accepted. Her daughter said she was sailing into her 80s and sailing solo on her 32-foot ketch, Jacques Coeur, into her 70s.

Born in New York City, she grew up in Tuxedo Park, outside of the city, where her family also had a home. She was the youngest of four daughters of Forsyth and Marian (Haven) Wickes. Her father was a counsel and a director at Shell Oil Corp.

She learned to sail as a child at the family's summer home in Newport, R.I. During World War I, Mr. Wickes served as a liaison between the American 1st and the French 5th Armies; France awarded him the Legion of Honor. On his many stays there with his family, Ann acquired a love for French and European culture.

She would later give to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts her father's collection of 18th-century art and rare decorative porcelain, which became known as the Forsyth Wickes Collection.

After graduating from the Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Va., in 1939, Mrs. Brewer set her sights on college, over the objection of her parents. "They didn't understand that the world had moved on and Mother's own capacity for adventure and friendship," her daughter said. Mrs. Brewer graduated from Bennington in 1943.

Helen B. Spaulding of Ipswich, who was at Foxcroft with Mrs. Brewer and later volunteered with her at the New England Aquarium, recalled that when they graduated they were told "not to take a job away from a man. But, Ann was determined to go to college." she said. "She was so interested in politics and the whole world."

While in college, Mrs. Brewer got her pilot's license and soloed along the Atlantic coast in her Army-surplus Avianca Cub. Her daughter said Mrs. Brewer still had hanging in her home an old wooden propeller that had been damaged in an encounter with a telephone pole.

During the war and after, according to Mrs. Brewer's former husband, William C. Brewer of Galesville, Md., she worked at the Marine Air Terminal in New York, where one of her jobs was to go out in a boat to make certain there was no debris in the landing channels of the old Pan-American Clipper seaplanes.

Mrs. Brewer also had worked as a photographer for fashion magazines, her daughter said.

The Brewers married in 1948 and lived in the Boston area while Mr. Brewer got his degree from Harvard Law School. They divorced in 1970 and Mrs. Brewer had lived at Manchester-by-the-Sea for a half-century.

There, she remained a participant in town affairs, serving for many years on the finance committee. A regular sailing buddy, her daughter said, was her grandson, David Siljeholm of Manchester-by-the-Sea, a teenager who died two years ago when he was hit by a train while biking.

Mrs. Brewer always was a woman of indomitable spirit, Rafe Parker said. He recalled one day in 1985 when he was coming in to anchor at Penobscot Harbor in Maine. "There was thick, heavy, dripping fog," he said. "In the distance, I saw a boat. When we dropped anchor, I called out to it and there was Ann who had sailed there from Manchester. She was sitting next to a coal stove, had on earphones listening to Mozart and reading a book."

Besides her daughter and former husband, Mrs. Brewer leaves another daughter, Gale A. of New York; a son, Conant of Brookline; and four grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday in the First Parish Church, Congregational, in Manchester-by-the-Sea.