Longtime South Bridgton resident Frances Therese (Muldoon) Fryer passed away at her home on Monday, August 14, 2023.

Fran was born in Taunton, Mass. on January 1, 1932, to James and Carmen (Comeau) Muldoon, the youngest of four children. When Fran was three years old, her family moved to Fairhaven, eventually purchasing a house at 52 Green Street which became her family’s long-term home. Fran’s older children well remember this house and the short walk to the beach at Fort Phoenix Park.

She attended Fairhaven public schools, graduating from Fairhaven High School in 1949. She briefly attended Syracuse University and Regis College (Weston, Mass.). Returning to Fairhaven, she completed a six-month secretarial course in August 1951. It was in June of that year that Fran first met her future husband Ron.

She worked for the Chair of the Department of Education at the University of Connecticut in Storrs from 1951 to 1953. Fran talked of this time in her life as an adventurous coming of age. She loved to tell about the time she and two friends drove her father’s car to Hartford to pick up Basil Rathbone and deliver him to a poetry seminar at UConn.

She married New Bedford native Ronald J. Fryer on Nov. 20, 1954. At the time of Ron’s passing in 2019, they had been married for 64 years.

Their first two children, Glenn Douglas and Mark Warren, were born in Ridgewood, New Jersey, where they had moved for Ron’s training as a chemist in New York City. Two more children, James Ronald and Karryn Marie, were born in Tennessee, where the family moved in 1957 for Ron’s first job in technical sales. In 1964 they moved back to Massachusetts where their youngest child, Christopher John, was born.

In 1979, Ron and Fran bought and began renovating the former Elm Brooke Farm on Fosterville Road in South Bridgton. This became the family’s spiritual center and Ron and Fran’s home to the end of their days.

Raising a busy family, running the household, assisting her husband in his work, and organizing family skiing trips and sailing adventures made for a busy life. Fran was a prodigious reader of novels and magazines. She spent many hours reading to her children and grandchildren, instilling a love of reading in the next generations. She did volunteer work at the Bridgton Public Library in her 70s. Ron and Fran made many road trips after he retired, including cross-country to visit their children in the Pacific Northwest.

Fran is well remembered for her accomplished classical piano playing and love of many styles of music. She adored animals and long walks in the woods. She was an enthusi- astic gardener. Pies and muffins made with her hand-picked blueberries were a specialty of her kitchen.

Fran is survived by her children, Glenn, Jim, Karryn, and Chris; her cousins Joan Ferguson and Sarah Connerty of Massachusetts; six grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews.

She was predeceased by her husband and her son Mark.

In lieu of flowers, Fran’s family requests that donations be made to the Bridgton Public Library. Burial arrangements are private.