About a month ago (yes I am WAY behind!), my grandma and grandpa Brown celebrated their 63rd anniversary. All of their 4 children came for a weekend plus a few nieces and nephews and great grand kids! It was wonderful to have a lot of the Brown family together.
We were able to spend an evening at the place they live (they recently moved to a retirement home and all their kids were able to go through all of their stuff at their old house while everyone was here) eating and celebrating. It was wonderful.
This weekend with the Browns was especially important and special because my grandpa passed away just 3 weeks later. It was a bit unexpected and happened fast. I was able to see him in the hospital before he passed and be with my grandma and uncle just minutes after he passed away. I will always be amazed at the strength of my grandma. She loved my grandpa completely and showed it every day. I felt so blessed to be with her through such a difficult time. I am so grateful that we live here near her and that we were able to see my grandpa often over the past 6 years. I’m grateful that he knew my kids and that they knew him.
The weekend after grandpa passed away, all of the kids and their spouses, plus a few more grandkids (my cousins), came for the funeral. This was the first loss I’ve experienced and it was a very emotional weekend. I’m so grateful for my family. It was an amazing funeral and weekend. We were able to host everyone for meals and just being together. I feel so much closer to the Brown side of the family and especially to my sweet grandma.
My dad gave the eulogy at the funeral. My grandma originally asked Jesse to do it and as he and I were sitting with my parents the night before the funeral and my dad was giving his thoughts and stories and adding it to what my grandma wanted said, Jesse and I had the hardest time trying to put everything into words. So my dad took over! It was a wonderful tribute to my grandpa. I learned a lot about him I didn’t know and became more grateful to him for all that he was and did. Here’s what my dad said about him:
September 10, 2011
Ronald D. Brown was born January 4, 1927 in Springfield, Idaho. He grew up in many different places, living with many different relatives in Utah and Idaho. At the age of 12 he was exposed to the positive influence of the church, baptized, and ordained a deacon. After graduating from high school, Ron joined the Navy and trained as a radio tech. When he first joined, he was 6'5” but the height limit was 6'4” so he learned to stoop. After two years of service, he realized he did not want a career in the Navy so he stood up straight at his physical. He was honorably discharged and began his education at Oregon State University earning a degree in Electrical Engineering and later earning a masters degree in business administration from George Washington University in Washington DC.
63 years ago, Ron married LaMona Merrill. Choosing to marry LaMona would prove to be the best decision of his life!!! They have 4 children, Natalie, Stan, Wes, and Charley plus 13 grand children and 9 great grand children.
Through their married life, Ron, LaMona and then their kids lived in Oregon, Washington, Washington DC, Wisconsin, Saudi Arabia, Alabama, and New York, then moving here to Missouri 28 years ago where they would subsequently retire. Retirement brought time to travel with their RV trailer to all 48 contiguous states and Alaska, with a trip to Hawaii to finish off the list. Before retirement, Ron never had time to pursue his hobbies. After retiring, he never had time do ALL of them! This included building and flying remote control model airplanes, building a vacation home, traveling to see his kids and grand kids, reading, and going to see the Final Four basketball tournament.
That is a whirlwind tour, so let me go back to the early days and paint the picture of the man we honor and remember here today. Ron was a man whose life was a continuing display of endless devotion to his wife and children, those who embodied his life ambitions and desires.
Ron was raised without stability and love. His parents were divorced when he was three and he spent his entire childhood moving from relative to relative, from place to place, learning to survive on his own. When he was 12, he lived with a grandmother who took him to church. He was baptized and spent three years involved in some aspects of the LDS church. He then moved on and lost touch with the church. But when he got out of the Navy and began looking to marry, he knew he wanted to marry a member of the church and raise his family in it. Those desire were rooted deep in his DNA as his great, great grandfather had joined the church in the 1830s in upstate New York and his great grand father had walked the plains with the pioneers and served in the Mormon Batallion, walking their entire journey. In his memoirs Ron wrote “I had been given enough exposure in the Church during my activity from age twelve through fifteen that I knew what I wanted.”
What he wanted was to escape from the environment he grew up in and provide a stable foundation for his kids, the opposite of what he had. The foundation blocks of that desire were education, activities, and church.....
Ron's career began in sales and grew over the years into general management, always involved in electrical equipment of some sort. He traveled the world for weeks at a time on extended business trips to places like India and Pakistan. When he retired, he wanted to see the USA with LaMona so they bought the RV trailer and visited every state! He and LaMona moved to Saudi Arabia at one point in his career where he opened up the entire Middle East for his company. He then came back to the states to run a couple of different companies before he retired. When he was in high school, he hadn't even thought about college until one teacher told him he thought he should go because he would do well there. This turned into a passion for education. He earned a bachelors degree and a masters degree. This was part of his legacy for his children who, among the four of them, have six graduate degrees.
After marrying LaMona and having four children, he began to turn more toward the church and its teachings. In 1961, he took his family to the temple where they were sealed for eternity, providing the ultimate foundation block for the stability he had never known in his youth. As his young family grew, he served often outside the home in Boy Scouts, as Scoutmaster and in many other leadership positions. As scoutmaster, before any of his own children were old enough to participate, he started with a troop of five active scouts. Under his leadership the troop soon grew to 49 boys, one of whom years later was elected to the US Senate. That's the kind of impact he could have on others. As his own boys grew up, HE was the dad who would go camping with his kids and family. HE was the one who would organize the Courts of Honor. HE was the dad who helped all three of his sons obtained the rank of Eagle. In addition to scouting, Ron served in the church on High Councils, as a counselor in a district presidency, and many other positions.
His kids grew and their activities became his passion. Ron had participated throughout his life at various times in basketball and in various drama productions. In fact, his most memorable role was as the lead in a college play.......the FEMALE lead!!!!
His most memorable personal basketball moment came much later in life, yes even after retirement!! It was his moment of glory........in his dreams!!! He was asleep one night, dreaming about basketball. Undoubtedly it was a close contest in the championship game and surely he was dominating everyone with the great leaping ability he never had, and never passed on to me!!! The game got tense, it was down to the wire. He soared, thrust out his arms to grab the final rebound, and promptly jammed both hands hard against the headboard of his bed, waking up at once, not knowing if he should laugh or scream in pain!!!
His four children split evenly to match up with his activities: Two excelled in basketball, playing at the college level. Two excelled in drama and music, playing leads in high school musicals and singing in many different groups. Natalie has sung with one of her choirs in Europe and Wes now sings with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Ron would routinely schedule his international travels around his kids' activities. He took pride in making it all the way home from some forgotten place on the other side of the world just in time for the activity to begin. His kids' activities were his hobby, his passion and his joy.
As the family grew, with the foundation of eternal marriage in place, church activity became the expected norm for the family. At one point, he testified that he had been neglecting paying his tithing for quite a while. He decided to get back on track and live that law. He shared his testimony that in the following couple of years his income tripled, providing a witness to him of the truthfulness of that principle and law. Ron created an environment that prepared his sons for missionary service, and all three served honorably. That legacy continues as all five of his grandsons have already served or will soon depart.
Not one to share his testimony readily, he WAS one to live it and to create an environment where his family could live it. That's what his college roommate George Huber saw. George came to visit Ron and LaMona when they had all four kids and were living in Washington DC. As Ron tells the story in his memoirs:
“At this time I was a Scoutmaster and George went with the troop and me to climb “Old Rag” in the Allegheny mountains. He also participated in other activities while he was staying with us. He was so impressed with the turn around in my life from the party days in college that when he went back to California he joined the Church and immediately became a Scout Master in his ward. He married (his second wife) Joanne, who was also a new member of the Church. This was in 1963 or early 1964 and I didn't see George again until (25 years later in) 1988. At that time his wife said she had always wanted to meet us to thank us, because without us, George would not have become interested in the Church and she would never have met him.”
Throughout his life, Ron remained true to his causes and his goals. He followed his course with exactness, right down to his passion for being punctual, and his expectation that others were as well. Looking back, he wrote in his memoirs:
“At the time of this writing in 1998, I have been wonderfully retired for nearly thirteen years and apparently have accomplished everything I set out to do in my two major objectives: I escaped from my environment and I raised a great family, four fine children, seeing them all get good educations.”
Today, we remember Ron and we honor his memory. He refused to be a victim of his upbringing. He rose above it all and defied the odds. He lived true to his beliefs, his goals, and his passions. May we all be so true to such worthy causes. Thank you Ron. We love you. You inspire us all.
2 comments:
Em, Em, Em. You spelled Dad's name wrong-- it's CharLEY!!!!! I hope you can meet your posting goals, by the way. Then I'll know what's going on with you and we won't have to spend 70 minutes on the phone trying to catch up! :)
I love this post. A nice tribute to your Grandpa, a wonderful man.
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