March 18, 1924-September 1, 2002
by Hollis Liggett
Richard Brown was born near Oxford, Miss., on March 18, 1924. He developed a tumor on his brain when he was nine months old and had to have both eyes removed to save his life. He attended the Mississippi School for the Blind until he finished the ninth grade, but then had to transfer to the Tennessee school when his parents moved to Memphis. Richard was very unhappy about this change because he had to leave all of his friends in Mississippi. But that was when we became friends for life.
After graduating from the Tennessee school, Richard enrolled at Memphis State College and received his bachelor’s degree. It was his great ambition to become a teacher and he had made such an outstanding record at Memphis State that his professors and fellow students raised funds to make it possible for him to get a master’s degree at George Peabody College in Nashville, thinking a master’s degree would make it more likely that he could find a teaching job.
However, back in those days it was rather unusual for a blind person to go to college, and jobs of any kind were very rare and hard to get. So Richard considered himself lucky when he landed a job at Southern Union College in Wadley, Ala. The only trouble was that the school was so small and so poor that the only pay it could offer was room and board.
In the middle of the year Richard found a paying job at a little mission school in Sevierville, Tenn. The salary was $90 a month and that seemed good until Richard realized that he was required to teach religious beliefs which he didn’t believe and were offensive to him. He had already become very liberal in his religious thinking. And when he told the head of the school of these feelings, they mutually agreed that his contract would not be renewed at the end of the school year.
Richard spent another year at Memphis State and sold Bibles and brooms with me on the streets of Memphis. Eventually he got a job with the state as home teacher for the blind at a salary of $150 per month. He was still living at home then so he was able to make it fairly well.
In 1952 he heard of an opening at Hines Hospital for a job teaching braille to blinded veterans. He filed an application and went for an interview, and was hired at a salary more than double what he had been making.
He met and married Adele Schreiber soon after moving to Chicago and they have had a very happy marriage for 50 years. Richard excelled at his job of teaching braille to blinded veterans, and eventually became supervisor of his department.
He worked for 30 years at Hines Hospital and then decided to retire and move to Sun City, Arizona in 1982. He was eager to get away from the harsh winters in Chicago and thought the heat in Arizona would be more tolerable than the ice and snow in northern Illinois.
Richard had many hobbies. He loved good literature and plays, and was a voracious reader. He could read braille faster than anyone whom I have ever known; just about as fast as a sighted person can read print. He was also a prolific writer of poems and songs, and learned to play a guitar so he could entertain groups with his music and his own compositions.
When Richard moved to Sun City he helped form a Unitarian Universalist Church since he had been a Unitarian for many years and there was no church in Sun City. He was one of its main supporters until his death. He was president of the congregation twice, and often filled in for the preacher on Sunday mornings with either a sermon or one of his singing concerts.
Richard wrote a book of sonnets and his autobiography which he had published by X-Libris, an Internet publishing company, and has sold quite a number of his books.
He developed bladder cancer in 1996 and had to have his bladder removed. The doctors said they had gotten all of the cancer, and Richard hoped he was rid of the problem for good. However, in 2000, another cancer developed on his left leg. The doctors told him that it was a sarcoma, a fast-moving cancer, and advised him to have the leg amputated before the cancer could spread. He went ahead with the amputation, but the cancer came back in a few months on his lungs, ribs and jaw.
Richard knew then that he didn’t have long to live, but he kept on writing, singing and working for the church, as well as caring for Adele, who was suffering from a deep depression. He decided at some point that he wanted to live to celebrate his and Adele’s 50th wedding anniversary on August 15, 2002. He sent out 70 invitations in early spring for a banquet (paid for by him) and a musical program afterward. The music would be provided by a professional musician who was also a church member.
The good people of the church volunteered to send out the invitations and to serve the meal which was catered. The church seemed like a great big happy family. They loved and admired Richard and Adele because of their leadership and contributions to the church. They were at their beck and call whenever they needed anything, whether it was to take them grocery shopping, to a doctor’s office, to visit someone, or to go to a church function. The church was Richard’s life, and the people were wonderful.
Margaret and I flew out to Phoenix on August 15th for the wedding anniversary and stayed on until August 19th. Richard gave a speech and sang two of his own songs with a good, strong voice; but on the following morning he was so hoarse that he could hardly talk. And it got progressively worse.
I am convinced that he kept himself alive by sheer will power for these last few months because that occasion meant so much to him. He died on September 1, barely two weeks after the celebration.
Many of his poems and songs were outstanding; those are probably his greatest legacy.