Beatrice Brown, a longtime resident of Katama who devoted her enormous energies each season to worthy Vineyard causes, her family, and thrice-weekly duplicate bridge games, died on October 28, 2009 at age 89 at her winter home in Edgewater, N.J.

Bea was born to immigrant parents Jacob and Rachel Kaplan in New York city on April 22, 1920 and raised in the Weequahic section of Newark, a community that she often observed “loved its children” which it demonstrated through its fine schools, parks and libraries.

On the advice of her mother, Bea left Newark behind and moved to Washington, D.C., in late 1941, where she worked as a publicist in the Office of Civilian Defense and where she met and married US Navy Lieutenant Melvin M. Brown of Denver. Following the war, they settled in Hillsdale, N.J., where she and her husband raised their three sons.

Bea channeled her tremendous energy into community affairs, as a volunteer fund-raising chair for the hospital and president of the local chapter of Hadassah and chair of its annual art show. Bea also became the American mother to two American Field Service high school exchange students who lived in her home and who went on to distinguished careers as senior United Nations officials, and for whom she was always “Mom.”

Soon after the death of her husband, Mel, from lymphoma in 1976, Bea moved to the Edgartown Bay Road section of Katama to be near her dear New Jersey friends Dorrie and Bill Caldwell (the latter formerly a columnist for the Gazette) and Margery and Karl Weber. Once settled in Katama, she jumped with both feet into any worthy Vineyard charity seeking her energies, imagination and organizational talents. Whether marathon sessions pricing items at the Thrift Shop or running a huge Katama-wide garage sale on the front lawn of her home to raise money for the hospital, no project was too daunting for Bea to take on.

Not long after the passing of her husband, Bea and her sons became cofounders of an organization dedicated to reversing the brain drain of Israeli cancer research scientists who had been left high and dry by the ending of the Nixon Administration’s “War on Cancer.” Among the scientists sponsored was Dr. Aaron Ciechanower, a physician selected in 1979 as the recipient of the Melvin Brown Cancer Research Fellowship. In the early hours of an August morning 25 years later, Bea was thrilled to receive an unexpected thank-you call from Ciechanower informing her that his work on the protein Ubiiquitin, begun under her patronage, had earned him a share of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

During these years, Bea became an intrepid world traveler, and there was not a corner of the world (including Antarctica) where she did not have dear friends and devoted bridge partners. Her passports were filled beyond capacity with exotic visa stamps, and there was perhaps no existing mode of transportation that she did not utilize in her thirst for exploration.

In May 1995, Bea married Dr. Seymour Sacks, a longtime Katama summer resident and Needham obstetrician, and the widower of her dear friend Mary Sacks. Sy brought along three grown sons, David, Jared and Alan, as well as his six grandchildren, and Bea and Sy spent the winters traveling or in Palm Beach before Sy’s passing in 1999.

Perhaps Bea’s greatest talent was as the loving matriarch of a large and devoted family: her sons David Brown of Edgartown and Manhattan, Peter D. Brown, of Easthampton, N.Y., and Palm Beach, Adam Brown of Katama and Englewood, N.J., Ambassador Haile Menkerios, of Manhattan and Tesfaye Maru of Cape Town, South Africa; stepsons David Sacks of Bethesda, Md., Jared Sacks of Herwijnen, Netherlands, and Allen Sacks, of California; daughters in law Nancy, Gigi, Lydi and Ayalush; grandchildren Melissa, Diana, Jacob, Rachel, Alex, Yonas, Sishu, Solomon, Jeremiah, Sam, Joe, Jonas, Kyra and Benjamin; and great-granddaughters Elliott and Lucy. In addition to her husbands, Bea was predeceased by her sister Linda Abrams Given and grandson Eric Brown.

Memorial donations may be made in Bea’s memory to Camp Jabberwocky (Marthas Vineyard Cerebral Palsy Camp), P.O. Box 1357, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568.