Tom Brown

(1934 - 2021)

Tom Brown, age 86, passed away on June 6, 2021 in Georgetown, Texas. Tom will be remembered for his incredible warmth, eye-to-eye smile, and never-ending positivity.

Tom was born in Qulin, Missouri on August 24, 1934, to John Earl and Nora Elizabeth Ledbetter Brown, where he was raised on a farm and attended a one-room schoolhouse with his two brothers James David and Charles. Although his life took him far from Qulin, Tom always maintained some habits of life on the farm, including waking up at the crack of dawn.

He attended Missouri Baptist College for a year before joining the Air Force in 1953 to help support his family. Early in his Air Force career, Tom was stationed in Chambley, France, where he attended a local dance for GIs. It was there that he fell in love with Marie-Jeanne Fuhrmann, a French woman chaperoning her younger sister to the dance.

After a two-year courtship and a marriage proposal via U.S. mail, Marie bought a plane ticket to Goldsboro, North Carolina and spent just three weeks with Tom before they were married in 1960. In 1961, they welcomed their first son Mark, soon followed by their daughter Julie and another son, John, all while moving among several Air Force bases throughout the American South.

In 1967, the family moved to Hof, Germany, where Tom was stationed for three years and became fluent in German. Soon after moving back to the United States, Tom served in Vietnam from 1971-1972. He retired from the Air Force as a Technical Sergeant in 1975 after 20 years of service in the medical field, and moved to Georgetown, Texas, to work at the Georgetown Hospital Laboratory.

Upon retirement, Tom volunteered at the Georgetown Visitors Center and with Marie at Handcrafts Unlimited, a non-profit shop run by senior artisans, for over a decade. Tom and Marie were longtime members of St. Helen’s Catholic Church and Holy Trinity Catholic Church of Corn Hill, where Tom served as a Eucharistic Minister and lector. They loved to travel and Tom loved to cook, pulling inspiration from his experiences abroad: Vietnamese noodles, cornbread, and sauerkraut and bratwurst were his specialties.

Toward the end of his life, Tom suffered from dementia but remained as happy and positive as ever. He is survived by his wife Marie, son Mark and wife Jeanine, daughter Julie and husband Eric, and son John and wife Brenda. Tom is also survived by his four grandchildren, Katie, Sam and Noah Pastor, and Mika Brown, who were the light of his life and will always cherish the memory of his early morning waffle breakfasts and big bear hugs.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that charitable donations be made to:

The Caring Place www.caringplacetx.org

Memorial Mass will be Friday, June 11 at 2:00 p.m. at Holy Trinity Catholic Church of Corn Hill, TX.