Julius Brown

We won’t be able to adequately summarize the life of a man who lived 93 years in one page. We won’t be able to fully explain the heart of a man as complex as our father in the one minute or so it will take you to read this. He was a man of many facets and many talents. He was an athlete, a high jumper in the days before the Fosbury Flop and a prize-winning bowler, a soldier who guarded German prisoners of war at the end of WWII, and an artist, working in various styles and media, from cut paper and collage to impressionism and abstraction in oils, pastels, and charcoal to found object sculptures in wood. He loved watching T.V. (everything from 60 Minutes to Joel Osteen to Turner Classic Movies to Little People, Big World), eating (crabs, fried fish, and anything sweet), and sports (even from his hospital bed, he was still dreaming ways to get back to Philadelphia to see the Penn Relays). He was born in Bowersville, Georgia at the beginning of the Depression, moved to Greenville, South Carolina, and from there to Washington, DC. In DC, the family moved from Foggy Bottom to Barry Farm and eventually to Petworth. For school, he graduated from the now vanished Armstrong High School, he studied art at Bluefield State College in West Virginia and later Howard University in Washington, DC, where one of the teachers who took a special interest in him was the legendary artist Lois Mailou Jones. There may be many ways to measure a man. One way is what he taught his children, and he taught his children to be honest, creative, and hardworking. Another way is to look at a man’s impact on the world around him. In his public life, Julius Brown steered several young men away from lives of criminality as a youth counselor in DC’s Department of Human Services and helped young women secure child support in the latter days of his career. Some of our favorite memories with him are from this past year, talking about the old days, reliving old trips, and marveling at how wonderful and singular our mother, his wife, was and how much we all miss her. We loved him dearly, and we hope he knew how much we loved him and how much we will miss him. Preceding Julius Brown to the other side are his wife Claretta Brown, mother Genie Heard Wilson, father James Brown, sister Sallie Mae Atkins, brother-in-law Herbert Atkins, brother John Harold Brown, sister-in-law Ahwaneeda (Nita) Brown. He is survived by five children, Julius Brown, Jr., Kevin Brown, Felicia Brown-Tarber, Darrell Brown, and Andrea B. Jackson; Grandchildren Joseph Lewis, Collin Jackson, and Aidan Jackson, and great granddaughter Morgan Lewis; sons-in-law Collin Jackson and Raymond Tarber; his cousin Coleman, nieces Renee, Denise, Genie, and Simone, nephew Michael, extended family, and friends, including good friend Marion Covington, who was there in body and spirit through some very tough times.

Tributes

Julius Brown

March 31, 1927 - May 21, 2020