Josephine Bruno died Feb. 7 at her home in Kennett Square, Pa., two days after her 97th birthday. She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Josie was a year round resident of the Vineyard between 1981 and 2002 and a summer resident and frequent visitor since 1965 at her home in West Tisbury.

Josephine Bevin Bowlin was born on Feb. 5, 1918 in St. Paul, Minn., the middle child of Frank, a second-generation Irish wholesale liquor distributor, and his wife, Cecelia, who was from an old Irish family in Maryland. Josie went to the Summit School for Girls and graduated from Vassar College in 1940, where she majored in music and studied languages. During the second World War, she worked as a nurse’s aide at a U.S. Army hospital in New Jersey. She settled in New York city where she worked for many years at the Russian Institute at Columbia University. She was fluent in Russian and her work required her to have a top secret clearance. She was an accomplished singer, and sang in the Dessoff Choir and traveled throughout Europe, including trips on the Queen Mary.

She married Phillip Bruno in 1957 and they had two sons, Clarke and William. After renting a house in West Tisbury in 1963, they resolved to find a house to make their Island summer home and bought a house from Helen Cooper in 1965. The house is known by many as the oldest house in West Tisbury. The family came to the Island as often as they could. Josie and Phillip divorced in 1971; Josie worked as a school secretary and administrator. In New York city, she left much of her conservative upbringing behind and was active in her parish’s folk mass and an advocate of civil rights. Josie had a great deal of empathy for individuals who were disadvantaged or had other tough challenges to overcome and volunteered at Head Start centers in Harlem.  

Josie’s life took an unexpected twist when she began a successful modeling career at the age of 62. Her shock of prematurely white hair and her strong, youthful features allowed her to portray a range of older women in magazine ads including a concerned doctor, an active senior enjoying a bicycle ride, and a stately, disapproving grandmother. She relished her three and a half year stint in front of the camera.

When her children had graduated from high school, Josie left New York and moved to the Vineyard. Living year-round in West Tisbury, she developed a passion for the Island’s natural beauty and its native plants and wildflowers. She was greatly vexed at anyone who would pick a wildflower, especially wild orchids, and as a local poet described, would put “a Martha’s Vineyard curse on people who pick ladyslippers.” With her 5 foot 10 inch frame and shock of white hair, Josie would trek through the state forest, open sand plains, woodlands, bogs and meadows looking for rare or endangered plants. She would often veer off the road, stop her car and jump out to examine and photograph a specimen she had spotted. She became a self-taught expert with an encyclopedic knowledge of wildflowers and native Island plants and had her own designated native plant garden 30 years before the idea came into vogue. Preserving Vineyard wildflowers from the multiple hazards to which they are subject was her mission and she was frequently called upon to come save some wild plant when bulldozing was imminent. She was president of the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Society and active in the New England Wild Flower Society, winning its Massachusetts State Award in 1996. She was a friend to all the conservation groups on the Island and particularly enjoyed walking along Trustees properties with her sons and their families.

At the age of 84, Josie decided to leave West Tisbury winters behind and moved to the Brandywine River Valley in Pennsylvania to be closer to her sons and their families. Her four grandchildren were her greatest joy. Josie is survived by her son Clarke and his wife, Julie, of Brookline, Mass.; her son William and his wife, Catherine, of Washington, D.C.; and grandchildren Alex, Sophia, Nicholas and Andrew Bruno.

A memorial service will be held Sunday, June 14 at 1 p.m. at Josie’s home on Old County Road where she spent many of her happiest years. Donations in her name can be made to the Trustees of Reservations.