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Obituary of Hope Marie Paulsen
Hope Marie (né Boehner) Paulsen, of Burlington, Mass. died on 25 January 2025 at her son Kenneth’s home in Malden, Mass.
Hope Boehner was born on Bigelow Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts during a blizzard on 11 February 1929 to Rhoda Gertrude Hyson (1906-2000) and her husband Raymond Kenneth Boehner (1903-1992). Her maternal aunt Vera Hyson Swinamer (1901-1987) was visiting and helped to deliver the baby. The landlady, Mrs. Fogarty wrapped Hope in cotton batting creating a mess! As a young girl her family moved to Hawthorne Street, Somerville, Massachusetts. Hope attended school in the Somerville school system graduating in the class of 1947. In high school, she played basketball. As a girl and young woman, she spent parts of many summers visiting her grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins in the Mahone Bay area of Nova Scotia. She was on vacation in August 1945 when the Second World War ended and has spoken about being out on her Uncle Charlie Boehner’s boat returning from Lunenburg to Martin’s River when they heard bells ringing and car horns blaring; it was 15 August and the War was over!
After high school, Hope went to work in Boston at Conrad’s Dept. Store on Winter Street in Boston where she became an assistant buyer. She also worked at Lahey Clinic at Kenmore Square in Boston from about 1949 to 1953. She worked for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the Division of Employment Security from 1953 to 1962.
In the late 1950s, her mother Gertrude’s first cousin Lois Paulsen (né Hyson) introduced Hope to Robert Paulsen of Woburn, Massachusetts as Lois was his step-mother. After a courtship of a couple years, Bob Paulsen proposed to Hope Boehner on Christmas Eve 1958. They were married at College Ave Methodist Church in Somerville on 12 September 1959. They moved to Allen Street, Woburn next door to his father Iver and step-mother and Lois Paulsen. In December 1961 Bob and Hope bought their home in Burlington, Massachusetts on St. Mary Road.
Hope and Bob Paulsen raised their three children Kenneth, Dawn and Dale in Burlington. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Hope was an at-home parent. Once all three kids were in school, she began to work part-time. Her first job was helping the special needs students at Pine Glen School in Burlington. In Town Meeting, Mom advocated for Lahey Clinic when they sought to relocate to Burlington from Boston; she was hired at Lahey in 1980. Mom started as a unit secretary to the dialysis unit until she had open heart surgery in 1982 because a rare congenital heart condition had been discovered and diagnosed by Dr. Bruce Mirbach. She was his project until he retired in 2018. After her surgery in 1982, she transferred to a less demanding position at Lahey in the New Patient Registration Department where she stayed until retirement in 1993. Bob retired the same year for medical reasons.
During her years in Burlington, Hope became involved in town politics. In the mid-1970s to promote a bikeathon in Burlington for the Kidney Foundation in support of her sister Dorothy Oberg, she rode her son Dale’s tricycle in the Selectman’s Office during a meeting and made the front page of the town newspaper. When Burlington transitioned from open town meeting to elected town meeting in 1972, Hope was a charter member having been elected to a one-year term. She was subsequently re-elected in 1973 to the first of many three-year terms serving until 2006. In town meeting, Hope was instrumental in helping bring Lahey Clinic to town. While in Town Meeting, she and Bob fought in the 1980s to ensure the so-called landlocked land just west of route 3 would remain undeveloped conservation land. She was a strong supporter of that effort. In the early 2000s, Hope was involved in the planning of the conversion of the Marion Tavern / Grandview Farm to be town rental space for events and the construction of Grandview Farms Condominiums as condos for townie senior citizens. She has also served on the Burlington Historical Commission from the early 1980s to 2025 and with Bob on the town’s Bicentennial Commission in 1998-1999. The image of colonial couple on the town’s Bicentennial afghan blanket is Bob and Hope.
Hope and Bob were active in Burlington life in the 1980s and early 1990s. They established the Burlington Artillery for use in historical re-enactments. Using wagon wheels from Nova Scotia, Bob built a gun carriage for a functioning cannon (named Hope) that was forged in upstate New York and could shoot a two-pound ball. Hope learned to fire the cannon and had her own cannon crew. Hope was the first woman in the Commonwealth to hold a cannoneers licence. They took the cannon to Castle Island on the Fourth of July and other significant dates to salute he U.S.S. Constitution on her turnaround voyages in Boston Harbor. They participated in cannon competitions. The cannon went to Nova Scotia twice and Québec City once; each time meant significant paperwork with the Canadian government as they were bringing an article of war across the border. In 1980 they joined the Soissionnais Regiment, a historical re-enactment group of one of the French regiments from the American Revolution. In 1981 as members of the regiment, they were at Yorktown for the Bicentennial of the battle that ended the Revolution. They later joined the Bourbonnais Regiment and in 1987 travelled to England for an English Heritage sponsored series of events to bring the American Revolution to England. They had many adventures with the cannon named Hope. After Bob died in 1999, Hope donated “Hope” to the General Knox Museum in Thomaston, Maine.
Hope had a great sense of humour which she inherited from her mother and grandmother. That sense of humour was passed to her children. Hope valued her time in Nova Scotia visiting her family. Nova Scotia important to her. Nova Scotia was home for her although she was born in the States.
Hope is survived by her son Kenneth S. Paulsen and his husband David Valentine of Malden, Massachusetts; her daughter Dawn E. Paulsen Ruel of Meredith, New Hampshire; her daughter-in-law Robin Hobbs Paulsen as well as her two grandsons Derek R. (and his wife Aubrey) and Kirk D. Paulsen of Moultonborough, N.H. She was predeceased her husband Robert Paulsen in May 1999, her son Dale R. Paulsen in November 2022, her father Raymond Boehner in August 1993, her mother Rhoda Boehner in November 2000, and her sister Dorothy Oberg in October 1994.
Relatives and friends are respectfully invited to her visiting hours on Saturday Feb 1, from 1PM to 3:30PM at the Edward V. Sullivan Funeral Home, 43 Winn St, Burlington, her funeral home service will follow the visitation at the funeral home. Interment will be at a later date in Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Burlington, MA and Park Cemetery in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. Donations in memory of Hope may be made to the U.S.S. Constitution Museum in Boston, Massachusetts (https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org) or the Mahone Bay Museum in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia (https://mahonebaymuseum.com). Condolences to her family may be made at www.sullivanfuneralhome.net
Edward V. Sullivan
Funeral Home
43 Winn Street
Burlington, MA 01803
Ph: (781) 272-0050
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