Obituary of Sandra Joan Brown

Sandra Joan (Sestero) Brown passed away peacefully on Sunday, June 29 at age 83. Born in Hartford on May 2, 1942 to Edward and Adeline (Bisi) Sestero, she grew up in South Glastonbury. Sandra spent her summers as a young person working in the area's berry fields and orchards, an environment she loved and returned to again later in life. After graduating from the Latin American Institute in New York, she worked for General Electric as a bilingual executive assistant in New York, Toronto, and Vancouver, British Columbia. Fluent in Spanish and French, she traveled the world in her twenties, visiting Europe, the Caribbean, Australia, and Latin and South America. In her early thirties, she returned to the US and enrolled at the University of Connecticut to become a registered dietician. While at UCONN, she met her future husband, Charles T. Brown. They married in 1975 and settled at Lake Hayward in East Haddam, where she lived for the next 50 years. They had four children together before Charles succumbed to early onset Alzheimer's Disease in 1995. During her career, Sandra worked as a registered dietician in care homes in Waterford, Danielson, and Hartford. She kept her dietetic license current into her 80s. Sandra was a lifelong learner, traveler, and adventurer. She loved books, art, nature, gardening, the water, her Italian heritage, cooking, and being a mother. Sandra is survived by her children, Elaine Stiles (Robert) of Old Lyme; Nathan Brown (Anna) of San Diego, CA; Antina Falk (Justin) of East Lyme; and Armen Brown (Malu Celli) of Quincy, MA; her stepdaughter Janette Sniffin of Mansfield; her grandchildren Nova Armstrong of Las Vegas, NV, Milo and Madeline Stiles, and Zakkary Dietz and Jaxon Falk; her brother Eugene Sestero of Middletown; her niece Emily Deliberto (John) of Vernon, and her nephew Brent Sestero (Alyssa) of Wethersfield. She was predeceased by her husband and by her stepson, Kenneth Brown. Funeral services will be private.