FREEPORT – Annette L. Singer, 94, of Brunswick, died Tuesday, Feb. 1, at the Freeport Nursing Home after a brief illness. She was the wife of the late Judge Joseph L. Singer.

Born in Auburn in 1911, she was the daughter of Pauline and Moses Shapiro, where she grew up and was an active member of the Beth Abraham Congregation.

She graduated from Edward Little High School and New Britain Teacher’s College in New Britain, Conn.

She worked in her father’s clothing store (Shapiro Brothers) in New Auburn where she proudly learned to speak and become fluent in French. She traveled extensively in Europe and Mexico upon graduation from college. She taught school in Lewiston until her marriage in 1942 to Joseph L. Singer of Brunswick.

She resided in Brunswick for more than 60 years. While raising a family of three sons, she returned to her profession as an elementary school teacher in Brunswick at the Coffin Elementary School until her retirement in 1977.

For several years following her retirement, she volunteered as a teacher at the St. John’s Elementary School in Brunswick, where she enjoyed conversing with the staff in French. She was a longtime volunteer for the American Red Cross and many organizations in the Brunswick area.

She was a 22-year winter resident of St. Pete Beach in Florida where she enjoyed many friends in her apartment complex and the company of others from Maine who wintered in the area.

Always involved in her community, she was particularly kind to friends and strangers alike who were drawn to her warm, loving and caring personality.

In her younger years, she made it a point to look in on and bring food to many elderly neighbors and friends in need, and had a special love for the hundreds of young children she had the privilege of teaching.

She was a voracious reader who loved visiting the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. In later years, her friends and family would bring her dozens of books and she rarely spent a day without a book in her hands or her lap.

She is survived by two sons, Ira S. Singer and his wife, Susan Gallagher, of Newburyport, Mass., and Asa B. Singer and his wife, Nadine, of Islip Terrace, N.Y.; and two grandchildren, Charles Singer of New York City, and Peter Singer of Islip Terrace, N.Y.

She was predeceased by her husband of 54 years., the late Judge Joseph L. Singer, in 1996; a son, Philip S. Singer in 1987; and her sister, Marcella (Shapiro) Glazier of Bangor.

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