Margaret Cassidy Obituary

Margaret (Maggie) MacDonald Brown Cassidy, of 349 Bellows Falls Road in Putney, VT, died peacefully at home on June 4, with her family by her side.

Maggie was born on Jan. 13, 1950, in Ithaca, N.Y., to Stuart M. Brown, Jr. and Catherine Dallett Hemphill Brown. She graduated from Ithaca High School and earned an A.B. degree in French from Bryn Mawr College in 1971. She enrolled in the M.A.T. program at the School for International Training, and during her internship in the winter of 1972, she met Daniel Cassidy. Two years later she joined him ("for good, in both senses," she said late in life) in Putney, where they have lived ever since. They were married on Nov. 23, 1977, and were grateful to be close to their two daughters and their families (Sarah Cassidy and her husband Luke Evans of Dummerston, along with Alexander Daniels, Jr., and Susannah Cassidy Friedman and her husband Jesse Friedman and their children Iris and Quinn Friedman, of Westminster West).

Maggie taught French and sometimes German for one year at Moorestown (N.J.) Friends School and for four years at the Stoneleigh-Burnham School in Greenfield, Mass. before finding her professional home at Brattleboro Union High School in 1977, where she taught until retiring in 2015. She believed that homestays allowed travelers not only to use their language, but also to understand other ways of living. In 1979 she and Dan led the first BUHS Swiss Exchange, which provided homestays for BUHS French students and their Swiss partners. Homestay experiences for BUHS French students continued every other year until 2017, and she also accompanied Spanish students to homestays in Costa Rica. After retiring from BUHS, she taught French to adults at Express Fluency, and organized an exchange in Rouen for her students.

From 2000 to 2010 she worked part-time with the Teacher Knowledge Project at SIT, training teachers in Algeria and Japan as well as the U.S. in an inquiry process to examine and improve their teaching. She loved to write, and beginning in the 1980s she contributed commentary to Vermont Public Radio; for decades she wrote features about students, staff and programs at BUHS for the Brattleboro Reformer, and later wrote community features. She was a long-time Justice of the Peace in Putney, and served on the board of Putney Family Services and then, after a merger, Putney Community Cares. In 2017 she became a Guardian Ad Litem for children in the Vermont judicial system. After many years of enjoying old and handmade things, Dan and Maggie opened Cassidy Hill Antiques in 2021.

She is survived by her husband, Dan, and by their daughters and their families; by her brother, James Hemphill Brown and his wife, Astrid Kodric, of Morro Bay, California, and her sister, Deborah Brown New and her husband Donald of Canastota, N.Y. (her younger brother, Peter Tyndale Brown, died in 1981). She also leaves her brother-in-law Larry Cassidy and his wife Marilyn of Spofford, N.H.; her sister-in-law, Linda Cassidy of Brattleboro; many nephews and nieces; her dear friend Genevieve Cheval, of Petit-Quevilly, France, and many other close friends, including former students in Cambodia, Prague, France, Switzerland, and Finland, as well as in the U.S.

The family would like to thank Dr. Loyd West, Dr. Bassem Zaki, Dr. Maxwell Vergo, and countless nurses at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, as well as Dr. Denise Paasche, for their sustained care for Maggie.

Memorial services will be kept private. At her request, memorial contributions may be sent to Putney Community Cares, P.O. Box 108, Putney, Vt. 05346, or the Putney Public Library, Main St., Putney, Vt. 05346. To share memories or send condolences, please visit www.atamaniuk.com.