My Dad, Elisha Kane Brown
INTRODUCTION
My dear children, I have just completed a biographical sketch about your Grandfather Brown. There are so many details such a sketch must leave out, and I want so much for you to feel about your grandfather as I felt about him.
Grandfather Brown was a great and a good man. There are qualities about him that I’ll never forget and times we spent together that I'll never forget. These are the things I want to tell you about.
Your grandfather was a serious man, somewhat soft-spoken, and he was also the most outlandishly funny man I’ve ever known. He always called me “Gravel Gertie” referring to my forever tangled hair, and he called all of skinny girlfriends, “Fatty Arbuckle.”
Uncle John and I used to get hysterical listening to him kid your grandmother about her cooking. When she’d fix creamed tuna on toast, he’d say, “Well, I see we’re having shit on a shingle again.” This was jargon that he’d picked up as a Navy man, and it absolutely infuriated your grandmother, much to our delight. He also liked to kid her by asking her repeatedly each night to come to bed. The more irritation she showed, the better he liked it.
I remember how emotional your grandfather could get. Every year when we’d leave the farm after visiting his folks and all sorts of other Brown kinfolks, we’d no more than round a bend in the road when he’d burst into tears. I never fully understood how he felt until years later when I had to leave home following a vacation break from BYU and the tears would start flowing down my cheeks as well.
I remember how emotional your grandfather could get. Every year when we’d leave the farm after visiting his folks and all sorts of other Brown kinfolks, we’d no more than round a bend in the road when he’d burst into tears. I never fully understood how he felt until years later when I had to leave home following a vacation break from BYU and the tears would start flowing down my cheeks as well.
Grandpa Brown always played the miserly role. He would carry on like he hadn’t a dime to spare for anything. I remember one time when your grandmother coaxed him into buying me an evening wrap. He grumpily came along with us, asking the store clerk if they had anything made by "Omar the Tentmaker", and then he wouldn’t settle for anything less than the most expensive red velvet coat they had for me.I can remember how your grandfather always supported me in everything I wanted to do. I can’t ever remember asking for anything within reason that he didn’t get for me, especially if it developed a talent or interest.
Your grandfather had the biggest and the hardest hitting hands of any father ever. I remember well, and even somewhat fondly, the spankings he had to give me. The last spanking he gave me was when I was nine years old. I had sassy tongue, and your grandmother had heard enough of my sassy remarks. But when she tried to administer disciplinary action, I managed to escape from her. Your grandpa caught me, thoroughly whomped me, then put me over your grandmother’s lap so that she could paddle me. He told me that if your grandmother ever needed to whip me, I was to let her. And, although she slapped my mouth a few more times, the need for a spanking never cropped up again.
I can remember doing things together as a family. We used to haunt the local Dairy Queen on hot summer nights. Other times we would lie outside together on a blanket late at night trying to pick out the Big and Little Dipper and catching fireflies. We went blueberry and strawberry picking together and swimming at the local waterhole when we were in southern Missouri visiting relatives. Each week your grandfather and I went grocery shopping together. He was always warmth and approval and security. I always knew that if my Heavenly Father was anything like my earthly father, He was a pretty wonderful person.
You grandfather loved auctions and many days during his last years your grandmother and he would wander about New Jersey and Pennsylvania attending auctions. Your grandfather loved country music, too - the more sentimental the lyrics and the more whiney the melody, the better.
The day that your grandfather died I was inexplicably awakened from my sleep just about the same time his spirit left his body. I guess he just had to stop by one last time and see all of us, and I imagine as he left our home and rounded the outside corner of our condominium that your sweet grandpa shed a few tears to last until we meet again.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
The year was 1921. It was the end of April, and with that spirit of rebirth that fills each of us in the springtime, Frona Elizabeth and Ira Edward Brown looked forward to the birth of their first child. This was not the first time that such a birth had been anticipated in the Brown household. Twice before Frona had conceived only to first miscarry and then to deliver a stillborn daughter. (At left: Original home of Browns in Vidette, Arkansas.)
As a youngster Frona had been partially crippled from a bout with typhoid fever, and so pregnancy was an extra burden for her. But on April 22nd her perseverance was rewarded with the birth of a son, Elisha Kane.
Lish (as he was called) was two years old when the Browns decided to leave their dirt-floored log cabin in northern Arkansas and to settle on their 119-acre Missouri farmstead. In true Waltonian fashion [referring to the television show, The Waltons], the Browns built themselves a two-story farmhouse with plenty of room for the next five children that they were to have. They subsisted on what they were able to produce from their garden each summer and what meat, milk, and eggs they were able to get from their cattle, hogs and chickens. 
Lish, along with his brother John and sisters, Leta, Peggy, Betty Jean and Bobby Jo, had a fun childhood. There were lots of stories he would later tell us about his boyhood days, like the time the children decided to hang John. They had taken young John to the front porch gallows, slipped a noose about his neck, and were about to give the fatal shove when Mr. Brown walked around the corner of the farmhouse, stopping the execution. And then there's the time when Lish and John were upstairs in bed making a terrible ruckus. Mr. Brown had repeatedly told them to settle down and go to sleep, but they were having such a great time cutting up in their soft, feather bed, that they had ignored the warnings. Finally Mr. Brown groped his way up the darkened stairs into the boys' room, pulling John out of bed and thoroughly flailing him. John was yelling and carrying on so much from his licking that Mr. Brown failed to notice that Lish had crawled down to the end of the bed and had hidden under the covers. So he pulled John out a second time, whipping him again.
Still another time Lish and John were out in the field, supposedly working, when they decided to take a break. They were relaxing under a tree and using the time trying to out-curse each other. After spending quite a time shouting out every profanity that they had ever heard, they heard a voice from behind the tree say, “Well, boys, don’t you think it’s about time you got back to work?” Your grandfather said that was the last occasion he ever found for cursing.
Studies were always interesting to Lish. He loved to read, kept meticulous notebooks and spent every evening studying. Of course he would later jokingly admit that he never liked milking and since studying was considered excuse enough for the other children to handle the milking chores, he chose to be a student. He attended Fairview School, a one-room schoolhouse located a short distance from his home until 1935 when he began high school in nearby Gainesville. He won a radio script writing contest in high school which netted him a push-button tuning, five tone transistor radio. When he graduated from Gainesville High School in 1939, he was fourth in a class of thirty-nine.
The next two years Lish worked as a bookkeeper with the West Plains Garment Company in order to earn enough money to go on to business school. He left Missouri for Quincy, Illinois and the Gem City Business College. There, over a six-month period, he developed a proficiency in both typing and shorthand. This enabled him to secure a job with the S.A. Healy Company (general contractors). He did general accounting and stenography work for this company in connection with their Wolf Creek Dam Project on the Cumberland River near Jamestown, Kentucky. This project was stopped due to World War II, but it was completed following the War.
Lish had only worked for S.A. Healy three months when he decided to enlist in the Navy. The Navy had always interested him, and he was able to serve actively in it during the War from January 27, 1942 until March 12, 1946. He also served in the Naval Reserves for a number of years following the War. As a sailor, he was nicknamed Brownie, a nickname that stuck. It was also as a Navy man that he met a student nurse, Phyllis Ginn, the girl he was later to marry only five months following his release from active duty (see row photos below).
The Navy made good use of Brownie's business skills, using him in non-combative office work. He took advantage of the armed forces educational program and by the end of the War he had accumulated seventeen hours in the following areas: ground school, navigation, meteorology, intermediate typing, elementary shorthand, office procedure, and business correspondence. Although his active duty was not directly in battle, Brownie did narrowly avert calamity in early 1945. He was on leave and was scheduled to return to Los Angeles via TWA on February 19th. His flight was cancelled, making it impossible for him to get back to his ship, the U.S.S. Hugh W. Hadley, before it set sail. This ship was attacked by enemy planes, and the very place that Brownie would have been sitting was bombed, killing all sailors in that location.
Brownie always said that once you're ready to get married, you marry whoever's standing next to you. He had two gals standing next to him when that right time came: a Wichita Kansas gal, Lillian Boss
(right with Dad), and a Kansas City, Missouri gal, Phyllis Ginn (left with Dad). These gals even had matching birthdays: Lillian's was on May 15thand Phyllis’ was on May 14th. While Lillian was busily putting together a trousseau, Phyllis was busily telling Brownie where to go and how to get there. Somehow the fisty Kansas City redhead won his heart, and on August 20, 1946 they were married in the Western Highlands Presbyterian Church in Kansas City, Kansas.
Phyllis and Brownie honeymooned in Excelsior Springs, Missouri at the Elms hotel, and then settled down in their third floor attic apartment in Kansas City while Brownie completed his Associate of Science degree from William Jewel College. In 1948 he went on to get his BS degree from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. Brownie, Phyllis, and their first child, Kathleen Elizabeth moved to Sunflower, Kansas and lived in simple military housing while Brownie finished his degree. A second child, John Edward, was born on March 25, 1950, and the following year, on June 4th, 1951 Brownie completed his BS degree in architectural engineering.
The G.I. Bill had given Brownie $90 per month for all 1iving expenses while he was attending school. Three days following graduation from the University of Kansas, he began working for General Motors, which was just in time since the rent alone on his new two-bedroom home in Claycomo, Missouri was $90 per month. The five years the four Brownie Browns lived in Claycomo were interrupted only briefly for two naval cruises to Bermuda and Hawaii for Brownie, as well as occasional visits with relatives in Kansas City or southern Missouri and a trip or two to the local Methodist church for the entire family.
For John and Kathi (pictured above) there were friends such as the Bob Norton family who lived across the street and whose parents owned the dry cleaners on the corner and Theresa, the daughter of a Bob’s sister who owned the local tavern next to the dry cleaners. Kathi and John began their elementary schooling in Claycomo, too, but perhaps the most significant event during those years was Brownie’s being laid off by General Motors and subsequently hired by Western Electric and sent to Omaha, Nebraska.
General Motors was in a period of lay-offs and Brownie was in a position where it had to either be him or his immediate boss who was let go. But the story that Phyllis liked to tell was that Brownie, whose original shirts and suit had become threadbare after wearing them for five years, had just purchased a tailor-made suit from Simpson’s and had worn it to work the day his boss invited him out to lunch to tell him the bad news. Phyllis swore that up to that day they had felt too sorry for Brownie in his old ragged clothes to lay him off.
Whatever the reason, the move to Omaha was a good one. Western Electric was building a plant in Omaha that would be used for manufacturing parts for the Bell Telephone Company. Dad was a construction engineer for that plant which was completed in 1958. His starting pay was considerably more than he had been making at General Motors. A few months following the move to Omaha, John was out bicycling when he was hit by a car. The accident left John with a multiple leg fracture. He was in traction for several months and then was sent home in a body cast.
The missionaries returned and taught her the discussions, but she didn’t readily agree with what they had to say. She’d later ask Brownie the questions that the elders had asked her, and to her surprise, he gave her “Mormon” answers. She finally decided that there must be something to what the missionaries were telling her and together Brownie and she were baptized into the LDS Church in May, 1957.
It can be said that from this point on, Brownie’s religion was the focal point in his life. Not that he changed much; he’d always been a Latter-day Saint at heart. But his time and energy went into Church-related endeavors.
Soon after his baptism, Western Electric transferred Brownie to Columbus, Ohio. Even before moving his family to Columbus, Brownie had secured a niche for them in the local Mormon church. He had always disliked public speaking, but as a new member of the Church in Columbus, he soon discovered that there isn’t any reasonable way to get out of giving talks and teaching classes and presiding over meetings if you are a Latter-day Saint. Their address was 1003 Indianola Ave. in Columbus.
Brownie had always had two main hobbies: photography and woodworking. He added a third hobby, genealogy, to his list and while living in Columbus, spent many vacation days scouring the countryside looking for relatives, living and dead. He firmly believed that once you’re hooked by the genealogy bug, there’s no getting it out of your system. He couldn’t ever kick the habit.
I guess that no matter how far you travel, there’s never any place like home, and so when Western Electric transferred Brownie back to Raytown, Missouri (a Kansas City suburb) the entire Brown household was elated. They rented a home just up the street from Raytown Junior High School and just around the corner from Robinson Elementary School, on 59th St. Terrace. This time church was in Independence, Missouri.
The Western Electric plant in nearby Lee’s Summit was large and Brownie thought that this move would be a permanent one. The entire Brown household had picked out their dream home and were all set to buy it when word came that they were being transferred – this time to Chicago. This was not an easy move to make, especially to a city whose purported sophistication was in direct contrast to the simplicity of life in Missouri. In addition to his work for Western Electric, Brownie had been busy in Raytown serving in the Elder’s Quorum Presidency and in designing the gelatin factory, the Independence Ward’s welfare project. In Chicago Brownie found a lovely home to rent for his family in Northbrook, Illinois. The high school that Kathi attended, Glenbrook North High School, was one of the top high schools in the nation then and it still is today. Although it was difficult, she felt like she learned a lot from attending it. Church for the family was in Wilmette, Illinois. Brownie knew that their stay in Chicago would be short and in a little over a year they moved once again. This time Brownie was permanently moved to company headquarters at 222 Broadway, New York City and for the first time in their seventeen years of marriage, Brownie and Phyllis bought a home. This home, located in Somerset, New Jersey at 57 Emerson Road, was a white, ranch-style home. 
These years were rich in friendships and church activity. Bishop Paul Christofferson and his family lived a couple of blocks from our family. His son, Christofferson, later became a General Authority for the LDS Church. Brownie served in the bishopric under Paul as well as the three bishops who followed him. Kathi completed high school and left for Brigham Young University, and a few years later John finished high school and also traveled west.
The final years in Somerset, New Jersey were filled with operations, with the eventual discovery of cancer and the amputation of Brownie’s left leg. Neither the doctors nor his family and friends ever gave up hope for his complete recovery, but just days before his death, his doctor told us he only had weeks to live. He only had days. He slipped into the next life in the same, quiet, unassuming manner with which he had always approached everything.
He was born a country boy, and although he ventured far from those early Arkansas roots, you would have to say that he died a country boy. He never quite lost his grassroots humor and simplicity so characteristic of those who live off the land as his family had. He left behind a lively legacy of love for all of us who were fortunate enough to share a part in his life.
The year was 1974.
My Father’s Surveying Tools
I never understood how he used them:
compass, transit, theodolite,
like delicate instruments of a physician
ensconced in felt-lined cases
or neatly arranged atop tripods.
He was an architect, engineer, surveyor
Memories of an Ozark boyhood
encircled his fields of vision
rocky creeks, uncomplicated hills,
oldtimers with their tattletale talk
He loved the strength of the land
He had the drawl of a Missourian
the gait of a New Yorker
face wind-burned deep russet
from his travels.
Once he visited me at the university
I watched as he analyzed each building, sharing
each architectural detail
the structural strengths, weaknesses
he understood and loved things as they are
I often wonder what he thinks
of the way I've built my life
the mauves and blues of mothering his grandchildren alone
I never understood why he used to cry
when we would leave his father
the man who taught him
a surveyor's measure of kindness
for everyone.
Now, tears streaming down my face,
I understand
My father hoped one day to be an archeologist
or a temple builder
yet was only given time enough
for building people's lives
My father taught me a love for all men
I will never forget kh
the Christmas train
It was a Christmas in my childhood not unlike others wrapped in winter white yet different
for months the pattern of our lives had been changed by a bicycle excursion ending in tragedy
my six-year-old brother, John, crushed beneath an automobile
we had no idea then the width of his injuries, the procession of painful years ahead
but now he was home from the hospital,
calmly cater-cornered on our green couch like a cat with questioning eyes
wondering why this Christmas so much lay tucked beneath the tree
Our dad started the music on the RCA victrola while we began opening presents,
endless boxes filled with wonder
engines, cattle cars, box cars, bridges, smoke and steam stirring through our souls
Dad grew up without celebrating Christmas, never could see the purpose in it,
yet this Christmas he bought every piece of train track in town
he said, "What kind of Christmas would it be without someone here to want a train?"
It was from my dad I learned how deeply a father feels for his children,
how in one frightened moment we learn what is truly important
that morning our home was filled with peace, hope quickened us,
under the Christmas tree the Lionel circled from track to track kh