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- Portland Press Herald (ME)
December 26, 2017
SCARBOROUGH - Harriet Joanna Sweetser Tamminen, always known as Joanna, died peacefully in her sleep on Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2017 at Gosnell Memorial Hospice House in Scarborough after a long illness.
She was born in Portland on Nov. 3, 1936, the daughter of Thomas and Winnifred True Sweetser and lived most of her life in Yarmouth where she was educated in the local schools and North Yarmouth Academy.
She attended one year at the University of Maine, Orono, but dropped out to marry David Tamminen and accompany him around the country and Europe at one Army base after another. At one point in her early years she taught school in Meade County, Kentucky system.
Her son, Cole, was born in Frankfort, Germany. Her daughter, Suzanna was born in Columbus, Ohio.
In the middle 1980s with her children gone, she returned to college at the University of Southern Maine, taking all the toughest science courses to support her deep interest in Nature. Once she had completed them all she went to work for the Maine Audubon Society doing what she loved most, teaching children about nature. For the next few years she was in charge of the children's program at Scarborough Marsh and at Mast Landing. She was predeceased by her older brothers Thomas and Robert.
She is survived by her husband of 61 years, by her sister Linda Sweetser Gurtman and her husband Caro of York and by her brother William and his wife Janet of Florida, by her son Cole and his wife Deborah McLean of Freeport; by her daughter Suzanna and her husband Campbell Barrett of Durham, Conn.; and by a large number of nieces and nephews; and by five grandchildren.
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