PORTLAND – When she was younger, Arlene Pomerleau spent much of her free time gardening, yodeling and playing country music on her guitar at her home in Augusta.
“She played the guitar like crazy and never took a lesson in her life,” said Pomerleau’s brother, Donald Cote Sr. of Sidney.
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Pomerleau died Friday at Maine General Rehabilitation and Nursing Care at Glenridge in Augusta, following a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 77.
Pomerleau is survived by her husband, Norman, who is president of NRF Distributors, an Augusta carpet distribution company.
Pomerleau’s daughter, Terry Gray of Augusta, said her mother was “fun and whimsical and always making everyone laugh. And she was into flowers. She had the most beautiful flower garden and the most beautiful lawn in the city.”
Pomerleau was born in December 1933 in Augusta to Arsene and Cecile Cote, who owned a farm in Windsor. She was one of seven children.
When her brother Cote was about 10 years old, he said, he spent afternoons at his sister’s Augusta apartment. He remembers she would play the guitar and sing songs by Gene Autry.
Cote said his sister had an early love for animals.
He remembers when he was about five years old his father gave him a pony. But the pony wasn’t trained, so Cote couldn’t ride him.
Arlene, 12 years older than Cote, lent her brother a hand.
“Arlene was the one that broke him. She walked him around and talked to him and got that pony associated with me,” Cote said.
Gray said her mother met Norman at a dance. They were married 56 years and had three children.
Gray said her mother had owned at least 19 dogs and 12 cats. At one point when Gray was growing up, she said, the family had 15 fish tanks in the house.
Pomerleau also enjoyed sewing clothes for her family and volunteering at her church.
“She knew everybody,” said Gray.
Cote called his relationship with his sister “very, very close.”
“Whenever I got in trouble with my brothers and sisters, my sister would stick up for me,” Cote said. “I’m gonna miss her.”
Jonathan Hemmerdinger can be reached at 791-6316 or:
jhemmerdinger@mainetoday.com
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