Dorothy Alden Whittaker of Brunswick, VT, died on December 10, 2025, at the Weeks Medical Center, Lancaster, NH, following a brief illness.

Dorothy was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, on July 3, 1934, to Gladys (Maertens) Alden and Andrew Julian Alden. She was part of a large extended family centered in Aucoot Cove on Buzzards Bay in Mattapoisett, MA, where she established her lifelong loves of gardening, collecting rocks and arrowheads, watching birds, baking, listening to opera on the radio while doing Saturday chores, and being around children. She regularly recounted being a very willing enlistee in her father and uncle’s “Victory Gardens” during the Second World War, learning to bake from her German emigre grandmother, and learning to identify birds and flowers from her “Down-Maine” grandmother.

Dorothy graduated from Fairhaven High School—where she was a star pitcher on her softball team— in 1952. She went on to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and graduated in 1956 with a Bachelor's degree in Elementary Education and minor-concentration in Olericulture (commercial vegetable agriculture). Also in May 1956, she married Brendan J. Whittaker, a Forestry student whom she had met in their Agronomy class when they were assigned to be lab partners. The two are also acknowledged in The Book of the American Woodcock by U. Mass professor William G. Sheldon, as being among the students who devoted spring evenings to gathering field data outdoors by listening carefully for the birds’ courtship flight songs.

After graduation and marriage, Dorothy taught for many years in elementary schools in Massachusetts (Montague), New Hampshire (Groveton), and Vermont (Rutland, Forestdale, and Concord), where she always managed to incorporate plant science into every year’s lesson plans. Somehow she managed to teach full-time and also bake all the family’s bread, along with frequent pies and cookies. She also continued to collect rocks, alarming and embarrassing her children more than once by pulling the car over to the side of the road and loading up on “good rocks". Over the years, her son Brendan was often enlisted to run the machinery required to help her maneuver her larger finds into place around her gardens.

During her summers, when not preparing for the school year ahead, Dorothy applied her childhood gardening experience and her UMass education, and, in partnership with husband Brendan and son Andrew along with help from other family members, started what eventually became Brunswick Gardens vegetable farm on the land in Brunswick, VT, she and her husband had purchased in 1960 and made their home. Their move to Brunswick also resulted in a long friendship with Izola Irwin of Maidstone, VT, another skilled baker and gardener, from whom Dorothy often said she learned even more about baking good bread.

Dorothy loved the forests she could see all around her home, in which she gathered the evergreens and cones for making her Christmas wreaths, listened for the thrushes and warblers, and enjoyed the winter quiet of cross-country skiing on the old logging roads. But her gardens were where her heart was. Dorothy’s Brunswick Gardens venture had a roadside sales stand and also helped supply several regional restaurants such as Le Rendezvous Bakery in Colebrook, NH, Bessies in Canaan, VT, and the famous Buck & Doe in Island Pond, VT, where owner and renowned chef Ronald Langford praised her vegetables, telling her that "her beets were the only ones that didn't bleed on his steam tables".

Dorothy was among the first local growers to pioneer the use of plastic "grow-tunnels" with metal hoop frames. Eventually, she had five, each one named for one of her four grandchildren plus her Seattle nephew Matthew. The four grandchildren ranged from enthusiastically willing helpers in these activities to less than thrilled to have to weed in the summer heat, but all of them regarded Grandmother as an endless source of plant and insect wisdom, yeast baking know-how, and as the authority on pie crusts. They grew up assuming it was normal to sit down to lunch and find old jam jars with unusual caterpillars inside, “interesting” rocks, and her well-worn copy of the book "Tomato Diseases” taking up most of the room on the kitchen table. In her very last years, when her memories were fading, her grandchildren could still phone her to get her detailed opinions on their latest bread baking or gardening efforts.

Dorothy had many loyal customers over more than twenty-five growing seasons from as far distant as North Conway and Pittsburg, NH. Her peas and tomatoes were in great demand, as was her sweet corn. The corn was seldom harvested ahead of time; customers willingly waited while she picked their orders. Many said it was the best corn they had ever tasted.

Brunswick was her home, and she rarely missed a March Town Meeting, and served on the town’s Planning Committee as Chair from 2015-2020. She usually chose to walk the mile between home and the town hall. At the same time, memories of her seaside childhood never left her. On visits back to Aucoot Cove, she'd load up her pickup truck with the help of her two Aucoot nephews, David and Joshua, and bring bags of fresh seaweed back to Vermont. She'd lay the seaweed down in her Vermont gardens as mulch on her vegetable rows, bringing her the scent of the ocean in Vermont's landlocked Northeast Kingdom.

As with Dorothy's grandchildren and garden customers, her students from her years of teaching school were a loyal following. One boy named his beloved new dog after her. Another former student phoned her out of the blue decades after he’d been in her class, because he’d recently come across some odd-looking rocks, and he had vivid memories of a walk along the Moose River Mrs Whittaker had taken with his class one warm afternoon. There, they had collected rocks, discussed the glacial ice sheet from twelve thousand years ago, and identified trees and other riverside plants. Fifty-two years later, he knew exactly who he wanted to call about the rocks he’d just found.

In Dorothy’s last years, she was not able to continue all her activities to the extent that she wanted to, but she still managed to outpace all but her most energetic companions. She persisted in her daily walks outside and developed a new interest, shared with her good friend Mary von Alt, in carefully watching for the caterpillars that would then form a beautiful chrysalis and eventually hatch out into Monarch butterflies. Anyone mowing her lawns had to carefully avoid any milkweed plants. As her own abilities faded, she never lost interest in keeping up with what her youngest friends and relations were doing, listening to the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday matinees on the radio, and enjoying calls from her niece Jane, who shared memories and the latest news from Aucoot. Dorothy treasured a visit from her godson, Bennett, dressed in his cap and gown for the graduation she was not able to attend in person. She took pleasure in calls from the far Pacific Northwest, where she could listen in on the activities of her great-grandchild, and she loved visiting with her young neighbor Rowan, who shared her appreciation for nature’s many marvels, including weasels.

Dorothy is survived by her husband of 69 years, Brendan J. Whittaker of Brunswick, her three children, son-in-law, three grandchildren, two grand-daughters-in-law, great-grandchild, and many cousins, nieces, and nephews. Dorothy’s ability to remain at home during her last years was greatly enabled by the loving care from family friend Mary Irwin Richardson.

Dorothy also leaves behind her sister Jean Wist (Walter), her brothers-in-law Bradford Hathaway, James Whittaker (Kathi), and her sister-in-law Anne Kallander.

Dorothy was predeceased by her grandson, Brendan Jacob Whittaker, and three sisters, Priscilla Hathaway, Elizabeth Roe, and Faith Paulson.

A memorial service will be held at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Lancaster on Saturday, May 9, 2026, at 2:00 pm, with Father Timothy Brooks officiating.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made to the Bennett Brooks Memorial Scholarship Fund, c/o St Paul's Church, 113 Main Street, Lancaster, NH 03584.

Arrangements are entrusted to the care of Armstrong-Charron Funeral Home, Groveton, NH.

For directions to the service, or to send the family your condolences via the online guest book, please visitwww.armstrongcharronfuneralhome.com