Lowell ‘Brookie’ F. Brookings

1913 – 2009

NEW GLOUCESTER — Lowell (Brookie) Fremont Brookings, 95, of New Gloucester passed away on June 25, surrounded by his loving family.

He was the son of Arthur and Marcia Eastman Brookings and was born on Oct. 20, 1913, in the same house as his mother on Eastman Road in Cape Elizabeth. On Feb. 16, 1942, he married his bride of 67 years, Barbara Merriman Brookings, the love of his life.

Brookie lived his early life in Cape Elizabeth with his mother, his stepfather, Joseph Sullivan, his grandfather, and three siblings. He was on the first Cape Elizabeth High School basketball team and also played baseball all four years. His favorite teams were the Red Sox, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New England Patriots, and the Boston Celtics. He was proud of all of his children’s accomplishments and their athletic achievements. Over the years all of his children had worked with or for him on his dairy farm.

As a young man, he worked with his grandfather Charles Eastman, raising and selling vegetables, later worked on the Gilsland Farm in Falmouth, which is now the Audubon Society, and managed a dairy farm in Scarborough. In the winter of 1936, he harvested ice from Highland Lake. At 12 years old, he was a wing man on a wooden snow plow and he worked one winter rolling snow with a team of horses on the streets of Cape Elizabeth with his step-father Joe Sullivan.

In 1940, he was trained at the University of Maine and began a career in the field of artificial insemination of dairy cattle covering the Bangor area and then managed the Androscoggin Valley Artificial Breeding Association for two years in Turner. He is the last of the early pioneers of artificial insemination of dairy cattle which deferred him from World War II so he could help produce milk and milk products for the home-front effort.

His real love was dairy farming so in 1944, he bought his own farm in New Gloucester, had a herd of Registered Holstein cows, and shipped milk to Oakhurst Dairy for 35 years. In 1979, he sold his herd to Amish farmers in Pennsylvania. After retirement, he harvested hay and wood from his farm well into his eighties and lived on his farm the rest of his life. He could not go anywhere without knowing someone or making a friend. He was a wonderful conversationalist who always ended up knowing more about the other person than they would ever know about him. He was always a curious and spiritual person and a lifelong learner.

He was a member of the Holstein-Friesian Association, National Farmer’s Organization, and the Farm Bureau.

He is survived by his wife of New Gloucester, five daughters: Lancey Taylor of Detroit, ME, Barbara Seaver (Scott) of New Gloucester, Lennie Eichman (Henry) of Hartford, ME, Gayle Hays (Jim) of Bailey Island, Marcia Davison (Paul) of New Gloucester and Brownfield, and one son Gary Brookings (Debbie) of South Portland, 15 grandchildren Tim Deemer, Todd Deemer, Garret Taylor, Marnie Morneault, Jason Bragdon, Lindsay Austin, Christina Prescott, Rachel Prescott, Hamish Strong, Angela Crocker, Christopher Gleason, Ben Davison, Nicole Staples, Breanna Brookings, Victoria Brookings, 15 great-grandchildren, and many brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews.

He was predeceased by his five younger siblings, Gladys
Sullivan, Phyllis Pence, Richard Sullivan, Eva Haley and Reid
Brookings; a granddaughter, (Shannon Davison; a grandson, Matthew
Bragdon; two great-grandsons, Parker Morneault and William Crocker;
and two sons-in-law, Al Taylor and Don Bragdon.