Enid H. Sharp

BRUNSWICK – After a difficult and lengthy period of progressive dementia Enid H. Sharp died on Dec. 29, 2025, at The Garden, MCSH in Brunswick.

Enid was born on June 4, 1934 in London, England where her parents were at the time. She was also a Mayflower descendant via her paternal grandmother, Grace Hastings.

Her life can be divided into two distinctly different periods. She was a precocious child entering the University of Chicago before completing high school and earning bachelors and masters degrees. She went on to earn a PhD in Physics from Columbia University along with marriage and giving birth to two children while doing so. While pursuing the PhD she obtained a position as a physics instructor at Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) and was informed that the appointment reflected a change in policy. The policy change being to accept a female as a faculty member.

Upon receiving her PhD she sought to join the faculty of the City College of New York (CCNY) where her then husband was a member of the Physics department. But, policy intervened. She could not be a member since her husband already was. This was a period of racial tension and concern for educational access and quality. So she obtained a New York City teacher’s license but was eventually fired for disobeying instructions not to take her students to Central Park at the end of the school year. Then, on to direct a remedial mathematics program for otherwise qualified minority students entering CCNY. This was also the period in which her marriage came to an end.

The second period began in 1975 when she placed a personals ad in the Village Voice, the village being Greenwich Village, seeking a kindred spirit for outdoor adventures. At that time she was renting, and planning, to purchase two apartments on Central Park West overlooking the park. The building was going “co-op” and she was serving as the intermediary between the owner/landlord and the tenants. To sell on the lucrative open market the owner would have to first sell a certain percentage of the units to current residents. Her role was to explain to residents the financial advantage of purchase. She also urged the owner to offer favorable terms of purchase to expedite the process. She purchased them and sold them for over eight times her cost. She was now financially independent.

Among the responses to her Ad was one from a person who had been at SIT when she was teaching there 15 years prior. Over the next four years they went on weeks long canoe trips to lake region parks in Canada, Parc de la Verendrye and Quetico, as well a visit to Europe in connection with his sabbatical leave. The relationship had deepened and a desire to live a simpler life in a rural environment emerged. They were to leave the academic world and move to a small farm in Waldoboro, Maine. Enid’s sister and her four adopted children lived not far away in Belgrade and her mother moved from Martha’s Vineyard to join them. Initially it was back to the land and the simpler life, heating with wood, milking the goat, a large garden and canning for the winter months.

And then came Randall Forsberg and the Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race. Enid, the Physicist, was all in. She worked to place a Nuclear Weapons Freeze Resolution on the ballot for Town Meeting, it passed 518 yes, 170 no. She became the Treasurer of the statewide Maine Freeze Campaign and was largely responsible for the “Dot Ad”, a signature ad with 1,610 signers from 250 Maine towns published statewide in the Bangor Daily News. Thanks to Enid, Waldoboro had the most signers after the state’s largest city Portland. She became active in a local advocacy group CONA : Citizens Opposing Nuclear Arms, and played a leadership role there for years as well as in the Freeze Campaign maintaining a branch office at home.

With the reduction of the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers concern abated somewhat. Her next endeavor was cohousing. They joined the developing Two Echo Cohousing Community in Brunswick. Two lots were purchased followed by the building of a duplex, occupying one half and making the second available for rent to new members while their homes were being built. Here she was to use her financial resources to promote the development of the growing community. But, long term membership in Two Echo was not to be due to the breakdown of consensus decision making as the community grew. Enid had been drawn to Two Echo by the sense of community and she saw a possible way to leave, maintain a living arrangement with a sense of community, albeit on a smaller scale, and make further use of her financial resources. They joined with another household leaving Two Echo and together formed the Douglas Park Condominium Association. They were now living in town a block from Bowdoin College.

The next “adventure” as Enid would put it, was to acquire an RV and spend summers for the next decade traveling throughout the United States.

Enid later met with misfortune when she suffered a fall and blow to her head which resulted in the slow but relentless loss of her remarkable intellect.

She leaves her companion of 50 years, Robert S. Marshall; and daughters Cynthia Campbell of Denver, Colo. and Jessica Kysar of Trion, Ga.

As a memorial, contributions may be made to:

the Dr. Enid H. Sharp Endowed Scholarship at

Stevens Institute of Technology

1 Castle Point Terrace

Hoboken, NJ 07030

where she taught and Robert graduated from

in 1960