Burlington County, New Jersey - Obituaries - Riley Sheppard Brown 1992 This file was transcribed and contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Barbara Brown Hootman (b.hootman@att.net) Copyright 2004. All Rights Reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/nj/njfiles.htm ********************************************************* RILEY SHEPPARD BROWN OBITUARIES Riley Sheppard Brown, born June 25, 1909 amd died June 22, 1992. COURIER-POST (NEW JERSEY) Sunday June 28, 1992, (Cherry Hill, New Jersey) RILEY BROWN, R. I. P. Riley Brown, a columnist for the Courier-Post for many years, waited until Father's Day was over, then slipped quietly away in the wee hours of Monday morning. His wife of 60 years was at his side. It was a fitting time for Riley to depart, if there is such a thing for someone so admired and loved. For family was the only thing Riley prized more than his profession. He stayed for Father's Day, then left. At age 81, he had fought cancer as long and hard and uncomplainingly as anyone could. A newspaperman to the end, he died without missing a deadline. He wrote his last column for the Courier three days before he died. We're going to miss that column and more than that, we're going to miss Riley. He never just dropped a column off. He stopped to visit - the way people must have taken the time to visit in the small town in Georgia where he grew up. He relished good conversation as much as good writing and he enjoyed people's company. A rich and varied career -- as baseball player, Coast Guard officer, advertising executive -- left him with an inexhaustible supply of stories. Each one ended with laughter. He didn't like everyone or every thing he observed, but he sure could see the humor in it all. He was a marvelous combination of the old and the new, the North and the South, family devotion and professional dedication. He was at once the quintessential Southern Gentleman, fond of the days before air conditioning and respectful of all women, and a thoroughly Modern Man, trying to understand his children and grandchildren and cope with a world changing at a dizzying pace. In his columns, he blended all he had been with all he became as time went on. On the occasion of a granddaughter's marriage five years ago, Riley noted that fathers never really let their "little girls" go. "I know I sometimes wonder if my daughters are getting the ice cream and the comic books they need to tide them over a sore throat," he wrote. But then, as always, he came to grips. "Time flies and the pages turn," he acknowledged. "One would not knowinly turn them back, even if one could. We leave our imprints as we move along, and we can only hope that they are clean, clear and worthy of being read." They certainly are in Riley's case. God speed, good friend. ____________________________________________________________________________ FAREWELL TO AN OLD COLLEAGUE AND WORTHY "FOE" by Carl A. Winter Courier-Post Staff Ever since the Courier-Post has published a Sunday Forum Section, this space has been occupied by the wit and wisdom of Riley Brown, who put his pen down for the last time only days before cancer claimed his life a week ago. His work was important to Riley; even in the last week of his life he wrote a column and aplogized profusely for getting it in just under the deadline wire. That column spoke with plain eloquence about the challenges facing this country in this post-Cold War world. It reflected his abiding faith in the strength of the ordinary American. Yet that simple prose masked a quite complex man. He was a son of the South, born and raised in small-town Georgia....and proud of it. When I first met him, the sparks flew. Riley was fully prepared to fight the Civil War all over again- maybe this time the Confederacy might just win. Although I was born and raised in New Jersey, my mother was a Texan and I had spent years in that western outpost of the Confederacy. But understanding Southern attitudes on race and states' rights and agreeing with them were two different things. Nothing suited Riley Brown, old football player and minor-league baseball professional, more than a good fight. Riley, of course, was having some fun at the same time he was expressing some deep-felt beliefs. His humor was the deadpan variety. We would be well into the battle of Gettysburg before I'd see the twinkle creeping into his eyes. Besides, that unreconstructed Confederate proudly wore Federal blue during his World War 11 service in the Coast Guard (that service took him across the ocean, to his stomach's immediate and lasting distress). He also lived most of his life right here, working in advertising and writing on the side. Nonetheless, his favorite piece of writing was his 1960 book, Stingfellow of the Fourth, which told the tale of the improbable tales of a dashing Confederate officer. If all the rebels had been able to match this derring do, the Stars and Bars would still be flying high. (By the way, that was the only time I saw his work signed "R. Sheppard Brown;" for us, he preferred Riley Brown"." This space he filled so ably for us these 13 years will seem bland and lifeless no matter what replacement we find. (The writer is the editor of Forum). ******************************************************** Thursday, June 25, 1992, The Phiiladelphia Inquirer, New Jersey OBITUARIES RILEY S. BROWN, 81 NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST By Christopher Mumma Inquirer correspondent Riley S. Brown, 81, a local newspaper columnist who began his career writing detective stories for pulp magazines, died Monday at home in Moorestown after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Brown, a weekly contributor to the Courier-Post's op-ed page since 1979, finished his final columnn early Friday after spending 12 hours on it Thursday, said his daughter, Judith Brickner. The advanced state of the disease left him unable to type, so she finished the column for him. "We always said that when the day comes that my father can't write, he'll die. Writing waas his life," Brickner said yesterday. Mr. Brown, a native of Cordele, Ga., began his career in the late 1940's writing detective stories. He wrote for an early television show, Western Balladeer, which featured Peter Boyle's cartoonist father, "Uncle Pete Boyle" as host. Mr. Brown then went to work for several advertising agencies, including N.W. Ayer & Son, where he was a copywriter for 20 years. He also wrote magazine articles and two books. One, Men, Wind & Sea, is a history of the Coast Guard in which he served during World War 11. The other, Stringfellow of the Fourth, is the story of a Confederate cavalry scout. Mr. Brown was workihg on another book at the time of hhis death, Brickner said, a "mystery type story about his home town." His column, a staple of the Courier-Post, regularly exhorted Americans to rediscover the can-do attitudes of the nation's forefathers. Surviving are his wife, Joan; daughters, Judith Brickner of Moorestown and Barbara Hootman of Hillsborough, nine grandchildren, and seven great- grandchildren. A viewing is scheduled for 8:45 a.m. today at the McChesney Funeral HOme, 30 W. Main ST., Moorestown. A Mass of Christian Burial will follow at 10 at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, Main Street, Moorestown. Burial will be at Calvary Cemetery, Cherry Hill. ***************************************************