All posts filed under: Family

This is where DJB brags about his family, so be warned!

Farewell 2015, Hello 2016

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Once again, the New Year puts me in a reflective and optimistic mood. As in the past, I’m taking to More to Come… to reflect on the year just past, account for my resolutions, and look ahead to 2016. 2015 was the year that both our children graduated from college, my father turned 90-years-old, and Candice and I had blessings too numerous to count. While our family has been blessed on many fronts, the same isn’t true for so many of our fellow citizens of the world.  The news we hear on a daily basis seems overwhelming in the nature and scope of the issues we face as a planet.  As an example, my recent reading (the subject of an upcoming post) has focused on our country’s seeming inability to come to grips with our terrible history of racial divide and hatred. But I could just as easily be reading on  income inequality, climate change, fake news, our increasingly broken political system, increases in poverty, or other similar challenges we face in this country and …

Observations from the road: (The family, friends, community edition)

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This is a tale of family gathering to grieve in the best way possible – by telling stories.  It is a tale of being part of a community. It includes guitars.  (Always guitars.) And it includes a haircut in a mini-United Nations. Hang with me.  I’ll try to be brief. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I received a call early in the morning from my sister Debbie.  She called to tell me that our brother-in-law Raouf – husband of my younger sister Carol – had passed away suddenly as a result of a heart attack.  Their two boys had come home from college the day before and the family had shared a meal together on Tuesday night.   By mid-day Wednesday, their lives had changed forever. My older brother Steve and I spoke.  We were not able to get to the funeral, but quickly agreed to find a mutual time to travel to Tennessee to see Carol and the rest of the family. Our father – he of the recent 90th birthday – had just moved into …

Tom Brown transition

Setting the record straight (Or when “True but not always factual” won’t do)

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A few weeks ago I wrote a post about a visit I’d had with my dad.  When it comes to writing about family, I tend to follow the dictum that I first used in It’s a Wonderful Life (For Tom Brown on His 90th Birthday) back in July. In that post, I listed 90 things about the wonderful life of my father and included the caveat that these were “all true, even if they are not all factual.” Well, I guess that wasn’t good enough for my father!  As an engineer, he likes things precise. So earlier this week I received an email from my dad entitled, “More to Come, editing.” I had recounted a story I’ve heard many times before. My parents were part of the post-war (WWII) marriage boom that begat the well-documented baby boom.  Both were from the small town of Franklin, located about 20 miles from Nashville.  My father had just graduated from Vanderbilt and he and my mom were married in the First Baptist Church in Franklin.  Before beginning his …

Train Travel, 78 RPMs, Chiggers, and Other Memories of Cleaning Out a House

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I took a day off from work today to be with family in Tennessee.  My father – who earlier this year celebrated his 90 birthday – is transitioning from living in his home of the past 26 years to living in an independent living facility. (The home he is leaving is not to be confused with “The Old Home Place” aka 407 E. Main Street, where I spent my formative years from junior high through college.) My two sisters and a brother who live nearby have handled most of the details of the move, and Daddy now spends much of his time with my sister Debbie and her husband Mark as he waits for his new apartment to become available. However, before I was able to focus on family I had work to do along Music Row in Nashville, and I found myself at one of our Historic Hotels of America, the Union Station Hotel on Broadway. I’ve told the story before, but it is so good it bears repeating again. My parents were part …

Mr. Emerson has thought about everything

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(Editor’s Note: Teachers are such an important part of our lives.  Our twins were blessed to have many wonderful teachers, and a few real mentors from that group. Last evening, Candice and I went to a celebration of the teaching career of Tim Emerson, the retired head of the Upper School at Maret, and one of the teachers who changed our Claire’s life.  During the evening we heard tributes to Tim — loving, personal, and funny — that indicated he had changed many lives for the better over his 36 years at Maret.  As one former student said to Tim while surrounded by about 400 friends and family, “Just look at the people here tonight.  This is your report card.” The lesson that we should never underestimate the impact one person can have on the world fits as well with Tim as it did in my last post written for one of Andrew’s teachers.  The following is our thank you to Tim on the occasion of his retirement, and we wanted to share it with …

Never underestimate the impact one person can have on the world

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(Editor’s Note:  My son, Andrew Brown, lost a very dear teacher, mentor, and friend yesterday when Ben Hutto passed away. This is the same Ben Hutto who was recently given a shout out by Stephen Colbert on one of his first Late Night shows, and the same person who was included — unbeknownst to us before we heard his name read out loud — in the Prayers of the People when we visited St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London a couple of weeks ago. Ben not only touched our family, he touched tens of thousands of people all across the globe. Ben had a love for music and life that reached so many people on so many different levels. I noted in my 60 Lessons from 60 Years (#54) that one should never underestimate the impact one person can have on the world. Ben Hutto was one of those people who touched many lives. Andrew wrote the following for Facebook, and as of this afternoon, his post was nearing 400 likes. It was just one of hundreds of posts and comments on Ben’s …

Sunflowers by van Gogh

Connecting…across a distance

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After a very busy week of conference activities in Cambridge – going from early morning until late in the evening – Candice and I came to London for two days to rest and reconnect with each other and with our souls. Knowing that we were likely to need a break from seven days of nonstop travel, meetings, tours, discussions, and connections, we chose to see where the spirit would lead.  Little did we know that although we were quite a distance from home, we would connect to friends old and new in ways wonderful and unexpected. The train from Cambridge deposited us at King’s Cross Station on platform 9, and that was the first reconnection.  My mind immediately went to those summers of reading Harry Potter books to Andrew and Claire at the river house.  And I thought…hmmm, I bet Platform 9 3/4 is around here somewhere. Sure enough, there was a queue of twenty-somethings waiting to take their picture at Harry’s famous point of departure for Hogwarts.  We laughed, and reminded ourselves that our …

The Tastes of Vacation: Wrapping Up DC Restaurant Week

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Our DC Restaurant Week extravaganza wrapped up on Sunday evening with our 7th restaurant in 7 days: the new Fig & Olive DC in the glamorous Foster + Partners and Shalom Baranes Associates-designed CityCenterDC complex (home to the 1% who want to live in a fashionable downtown apartment…but I digress.) Six of this week’s seven eateries were new to us, which was part of the allure, and we saved some of the best for last. Friday evening, Candice and I visited Mintwood Place – a highly rated restaurant where we had sampled brunch in the past. We were excited about this dinner, as the restaurant is ranked #2 in Tom Sietsema’s 2014 Fall Dining Guide and is also a top-ten pick of Tom Kilman of Washingtonian magazine. After our meal, I’m here to say I cannot understand these rankings.  The food was good, but not the best we had during the week (or even the weekend).  Mintwood did only serve off the Restaurant Week menu, so I understand that some of their outstanding regulars may …

The Ambulance Survivor’s Club

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If you know me, you know that I fractured my shoulder on March 3, 2015 – the night before my 60th birthday – after being hit by an ambulance.  Tonight, the two charter members of the Ambulance Survivor’s Club joined family and friends at Jackie’s Restaurant in Silver Spring to celebrate our recovery. To take you down memory lane, here’s how I described it at the time: Some people will do anything to avoid going to work on their birthday. My excuse? I was hit by an ambulance while helping a friend who had fallen on the ice. Yep, you read that right. We made the local news. (A colleagues’ husband had seen it on one of those small screens they now have in cabs, so she wrote, “You’re famous in cabs!”)  A friend (Nancy) who was staying with us went out to dinner with a client, and she slipped and fell on the road behind our house when she returned. An angel of a neighbor found her and called us. We went out to …