GUILDERLAND — Doris Jean (née Scharlott) Brown was an adventurous self-made woman, recalled her daughter, Carolyn Boldiston. She died on Thursday,  June 29, 2017, at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady, after struggling with advanced lung disease and related complications. She was 82.

Mrs. Brown was born on Aug. 27, 1934 in Cleveland, Ohio to the late Frederick and Elsie Tarbet Scharlott.

She graduated from Shaw High School in East Cleveland in 1952, and then moved to western New York. After marrying and having three children in the Randolph-Salamanca area, Mrs. Brown moved with her family in 1962 to Delmar, where, family members wrote in a tribute, “She continued to enjoy family life, reading, gardening, and community theater.”

Ms. Boldiston said that Mrs. Brown had been told, in high school, by her mother that she would not be able to go to college, and so had shifted her course load from a more academic track to one better suited to secretarial school. When she began her career, she chose to work for a smaller agency, her daughter said, where she would be able to create the kinds of opportunities she wanted to have.

Mrs. Brown began working in 1966 for the State of New York in the Division of Substance Abuse Services, at the clerical level. Over time, she became a successful senior manager and administrator in budget and fiscal control, contract management, and other areas. “She found her work to be very rewarding and enjoyed her interaction with staff not only in Albany but also in the New York City area,” her family wrote, adding that she received the Division of Substance Abuse Services’ Director’s Award and, after last serving in the “very responsible” position of special assistant to the director of the division, she retired in 1989 and received a citation for her work from Governor Mario Cuomo.

Mrs. Brown had always planned to travel the world with her husband, Herman Dawayne Brown, and with Ms. Boldiston’s aunt and uncle. After Mr. Brown’s death in 1987 and her own retirement two years later, she managed to find ways to fulfill that dream: traveling with her daughter, or her son, or visiting relatives overseas.

Mrs. Brown took a number of trips to various parts of the world: to Australia, Kenya, and South America. She was an Anglophile, Ms. Boldiston said, and made several trips to England and visited the Isle of Man to do genealogical research on her mother’s family, who came from that area. She traveled by freighter through the Panama Canal and by riverboat through the Amazon, her daughter said.

After retiring, she also went to live for five years in the Adirondacks and worked on improving the house and property she owned there. When she returned to the Capital District, she moved to an apartment in Guilderland.

She was a devoted grandmother, her family wrote, who helped care for her grandchildren and enjoyed attending various events in which they participated, traveling often to be with those who lived out of town. She enjoyed playing games and doing jigsaw puzzles with her family, particularly in her later years.

Mrs. Brown had a strong sense of justice and considered herself a humanist, Ms. Boldiston said. Spiritual rather than religious, she had faith that it was possible to make life better for people. This sense was honed in the late 1950s by a school trip to Washington, D.C. on which she accompanied Mr. Brown — a high-school history teacher — and first saw signs over washrooms and water fountains reading “Colored only.”

“The injustice of that really struck her,” said Ms. Boldiston. She supported Bernie Sanders, her daughter said, and felt strongly about “everyone having access to health care and to a decent standard of living.” She has copies of a number of letters her mother wrote to legislators, Ms. Boldiston said, on the way federal funds were being spent or various bills that had been proposed.

Most recently, Mrs. Brown was an active officer and member of the Friends of the Schoolcraft House in Guilderland. She was also involved with the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants’ Albany office, collecting donations and organizing activities, Ms. Boldiston said.

Mrs. Brown has continued to be of service, her family wrote, by participating in the Anatomical Gift Program of Albany Medical College.

Mrs. Brown gave of her time and energy as a warm mother, Ms. Boldiston said, and also stood as an example to her children of how hard work could bring about opportunity.

As Ms. Boldiston and her siblings were growing into adulthood, their mother was always there for them but she was also good at letting them travel abroad and find their own way in life, Ms. Boldiston said.

Ms. Boldiston recalled that, once, when her mother was reminiscing about the extended trips that the family had made years before through the Northeast, to Canada, and into the southern states, Mrs. Brown said, “We were adventurous, you know.”

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Doris Jean Brown is survived by her brother and sister-in-law, Frederic and Joan Scharlott, and by her three children and their spouses: Maureen Lansaw and her husband, Edward, of Altamont; Carolyn Boldiston and her husband, Chris, of Albany; and Keith and his wife, Sonali, of McLean, Virginia. She is also survived by six grandchildren: Nick, Sarah, Sophie, Ethan, Ian, and Seren; and by many nieces and nephews.

Her husband of 33 years, Herman Dawayne Brown, died in 1987.

A memorial celebration will be held on Sunday, Aug. 20, 2017. Please contact the family for location and time.

Memorial contributions may be made to Friends of the Schoolcraft House, Post Office Box 779, Guilderland, New York 12084 or to a charity of their choice.

— Elizabeth Floyd Mair