Lorna E.G. “June” Carr, longtime tutor and Bolton Hill preservationist, died of heart failure Jan. 15 at Symphony Manor in Roland Park. The former longtime Park Avenue resident was 96.
“June was very British and was such a tremendous presence in the neighborhood for years and years, and I think helped start the Bolton Hill Garden Club,” said Lee Tawney, a Bolton Hill neighbor.
Dorothy Linthicum has been a friend for more than 40 years.
“She was a very sweet, but a quiet person,” Mrs. Linthicum said.”She was a lovely lady, but very firm.”
Lorna Elizabeth Noel June Gibson — who after her marriage was known as June Carr — was born in Taunton, England, to Dr. John Gibson, a dentist, and Norah Gibson, who managed the family home.
When she was 7, her father died, and she and her mother moved to Bristol, England, where she graduated from Clifton High School for Girls.
As a child during the World War II blitz, she was evacuated with other children to the country, according to a niece, Amanda Stiff, of Sarasota, Florida.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy from the University of Bristol and in the early 1960s was recruited to come to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she worked for several years as a therapist.
In 1964, she married Louis J. “Lou” Carr, an official of Anderson & Ireland Co., a family-owned Inner Harbor wholesale hardware firm.
The couple settled into a home on Park Avenue as the Bolton Hill preservationist movement was getting underway, and restored several properties.
When neighbors proposed a vest pocket park on Bolton Street between Dolphin Street and Dolphin Lane, to be named after two African American men who had lived there for decades, Edward William Parago and William Gailes Contee, the city Recreation and Parks declined on the basis that parks weren’t named after living people.
“Mrs Carr and others formed the 1200 Block Association and pushed for the park to be named after the two Black men,” Mr. Tawney said.
The city finally relented and according to the Bolton Hill Bulletin, the neighborhood association newsletter, it was “very possibly the first city park to be named after Black Baltimoreans.”
“The park opened in 1971… after the 1968 race riot,” Mr. Tawney said.
For more than 40 years, Mrs. Carr helped children learn to read in the Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church tutoring program, and then in her 80s, stopped tutoring and became the program’s children’s librarian.
She was also an active member of the church and served as a bell ringer.
She was an avid gardener and a former president of the Bolton Hill Garden Club.
“I first met her one day when I was trimming the roses in the front of my house,” recalled Valerie Olson, a friend and Bolton Hill neighbor. “She knew so much about gardening and plants and she showed me how to properly trim roses, and I’m still doing it all these years after.”
Mrs. Carr was recently recognized for being a 50-year member of the Daughters of the British Empire, a women’s service organization for British women who live abroad.
“June was a very orderly regent and did everything by the book and there was never, ever any deviation,” Mrs. Linthicum said
She enjoyed playing both tennis and squash at the Bolton Hill Swim Club and Meadow Mill Squash Club, and enjoyed both sports well into her 80s.
For the last 2 1/2 years, she had been living at Symphony Manor.
A celebration of her life will be held at 11 a.m. May 10 at Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church at 1316 Park Ave. in Baltimore.
In addition to Ms. Stiff, she is survived by two nephews, Francis Stiff, of Alexandria, Virginia, and Christopher Gibson, of England, and four more nieces, Tessa Orford, Sarah Senior, Jane Stephens and Susanna McLaughlin, all of England.
Have a news tip? Frederick N. Rasmussen at frasmussen@baltsun.com and 410-332-6536.