TRAVERSE CITY-- Friends remembered Ed Brown as a "Huck Finn kind of guy" whose love of water and boats helped launch the Maritime Heritage Alliance.
Brown, 98, of Traverse City, died earlier this month, and a memorial service took place this week.
He was among a group of wooden boat enthusiasts who formed the heritage alliance, a Traverse City history organization, about 30 years ago.
"He was really an adventurer," said Rich Brauer, who served on the group's board for years. "He was one of those characters that spent his days plying the water, so when he moved here and retired he just wanted to get back to that more."
Brown grew up in Sault Ste. Marie and "spent his childhood on the river," said Laura Quackenbush, who also works with the alliance. He earned degrees in urban planning and worked in Lansing before moving to Traverse City after retirement, according to his obituary.
Quackenbush credits Brown for helping get the alliance going.
"He was really the visionary who saw that, and the leader who said, 'We can go ahead with projects'," she said.
One of the group's projects was to build the schooner Madeline.
"He also liked history, but, especially maritime history, and his vision for the Maritime Heritage Alliance was a historical group with research facilities and a museum and historic vessels," said Steve Harold, another of the group's early members.
Brown not only worked hard for the alliance but also told Brauer he was grateful "for an organization of this many like-minded people that loved boats."
"If he could have used his funeral... as a fund-raiser for the MHA he would have. If he could have charged admission he absolutely would have done it," Brauer said.
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Related Photos
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Ed Brown, of Traverse City, works on the rigging of the boat Gracie L in this photo from the 1980s. Brown, among the founders of the local Maritime Heritage Alliance, died this month. Special to the Record-Eagle
Maritime visionary dies
He helped form the Maritime Heritage Alliance in TC
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