JULIE (BROWN) MAIOLO

Julie (Brown) Maiolo, 68, died in her home in Duluth early in the morning of Aug. 28, 2010, with family beside her.

She was born to Roy and Agnes (Hoidahl) Brown on June 3, 1942, in Thief River Falls, Minn., and grew up, with two loving older sisters, in a big, old house. The town was her playground. A tireless, enthusiastic girl, she swam in the river in summer and skated its frozen surface in winter.

When their father was transferred to Moorhead, Minn., and they moved into a modern house, eighth-grader Julie's new school offered a variety of interests, and she soon became popular and active as a teenager. She painted an apple tree on the kitchen wall, branching up onto the ceiling. She sang in school and church choirs, listened to the Bach played on the organ on Sundays, and excelled in her studies, graduating in the top ten percent of a large class.

At Concordia College, whenever Julie passed the art barn, the smell of oil paints attracted her; she majored in art with a minor in English. She took on part-time and full-time jobs, painted sets for theatre, sculpted a head in her own image, danced and sang in musical plays, and was voted Winter Carnival Queen.

Soon after graduation from Concordia, Julie married Joseph Maiolo, a First Lieutenant in the Air Force, from Norton, Va.. They lived in Indiana and Ohio, then moved to Charlottesville, Va., where Joseph attended graduate school in English. It was 1966-68, and Julie was charged with teaching in the first of the integrated schools in that old Southern town. She challenged a die-hard Daughter of the Confederacy over the coming integration, and held her own. She participated in protests and rallies. At a river's fenced-off swimming beach, she urged her African-American students, most of whom had never been swimming, through the open gate and on toward the water, while a gun-wielding guard appeared behind her, yelling obscenities.

In northern Virginia, Julie turned her focus on what she had always wanted to be her life's work: making a good family. Joshua Joseph came in Reston, Va., Ann Elise at the small farm in Ashburn, Va., where Julie taught at the local high school. She and Joseph restored the first of their three old houses, put in large gardens, and enjoyed their children. In 1976, Joseph accepted a teaching position in the English Department at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). In 1979, Lotti Sun completed the family.

Julie's 31-year teaching career in five states included 17 years in Duluth, during the final years of which she taught elementary children because, as she said in her acceptance speech as Art Educator of the Year for Minnesota 2001, "All children are marvelous creators when you motivate and encourage them. Every day was an interesting day at work." In her retirement, she taught a highly popular after-school art club for children.

Julie encouraged several thousand students (in some 30 schools) to produce quality artwork, including many murals, and to study art history and the humanities. She exhibited their work and took them on field trips to national and state art galleries and museums.

Julie fulfilled her primary dream of making a good family within a home of comfort and beauty, often without expense transforming common objects and spaces into an atmosphere of artful pleasure. Her dinner parties, large and small, were gifts to her family and friends, offered with the full measure of her easy charm and grace, humor and inclusiveness. Funny and fun, she had gracious manners and was always considerate of the feelings of others.

Julie did graduate work at the University of Virginia, The American University, the University of Wisconsin Superior, UMD, and Hamline University. Selected paintings of hers have been exhibited in several states and in Norway and Sweden. But she always put people before her art, and competition was foreign to her nature. A fine artist in her own right, she left many accomplished works of art.

Perhaps her highest, truest art was--and is--the very life she lived, and gave to so many.

She was preceded in death by her parents.

She is survived by her husband, Joseph; son Joshua (Kim); daughters Ann (Brian) Godden and Lotti Sun Maiolo (Tim Mahan); devoted sisters Gail Ryan and Bonnie Allen; grandchildren Anthony, Austin, Emily, and Jacob; nieces, Jan and Lisa; and nephew, David.

A CELEBRATION IN WORDS, MUSIC AND ART of Julie's life will be held at 11 a.m. Oct. 9, in Concordia Lutheran Church in Duluth. In lieu of flowers, memorials might be made to the Clayton, Jackson, McGhie Memorial Foundation; St. Mary's Hospice and Palliative Care; Churches United in Ministry.

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