Raymond Odell Brown, 1909-1989

I have known Odell Brown for almost 50 years. When you sit down to write the memoirs of one of your peers who was close to you and who was one of your preachers before you retired from the episcopacy, it gets pretty close to you. Writing these memoirs for Odell Brown has been a sad task for me, but one that I did not want anyone else to have.

Odell Brown was born in Stokes County, North Carolina, on December 19, 1909. He was the son of the late William Vaden Brown and the late Cora Alice Salley Brown. He graduated from Trinity High School in Trinity, North Carolina. He had an undergraduate degree from High Point College and was a graduate of the Duke Divinity School. He received his Master's Degree from Emory University and completed all of his academic requirements for a Ph.D. at Columbia University. He joined the Western North Carolina conference in 1940. Later he moved to the Central Illinois conference, and then in 1954 he transferred to the Virginia conference. That conference became his home until his death.

Odell served as conference evangelist from 1968 until 1970. While he was also serving the Christiansburg Circuit, his churches in Virginia involved Capitol Heights in Martinsville, Oakland in Danville, and Mt. Bethel in Henry County. He retired from the active itinerancy in 1978. Following retirement, he served for five years at the Pleasant Grove United Methodist Church. At the time of his death, he was attending Smith Memorial United Methodist Church in Collinsville. He was preceded in death by his wife, Mary Lee Sterling Brown, who died November 17, 1988. He is survived by one son, Dr. George Stanley Brown of Annandale, and two brothers, Coy L. Brown of High Point, North Carolina, and Thurman E. Brown of Kernersville, North Carolina. His funeral was held at Smith Memorial Church by the Rev. John McCormick, the pastor, and the Rev. W. Ernest Hogge, the superintendent of the Danville District. His burial place is in Floral Garden Park Cemetery in High Point, North Carolina.

Odell Brown was raised a poor boy on a farm in the little community of Trinity, North Carolina. It was here that his real drive for education and a good personal library was born and cultivated. At his death, his library was given to Asbury School of Theology and the John Wesley College. Odell believed strongly in the call to preach. His call to ministry was the foundation upon which he built his life. He believed in the power of preaching. His one aim in preaching was to bring his hearers closer to Jesus Christ and to offer those who had not done so the opportunity to commit their lives to his Lord and Savior. He is the best-read preacher that I have ever known. I still chuckle as I remember the Minister's Convocations at Blackstone. I helped him load his car a time or two. It seemed as though he had gone in the bookstore and bought whatever they had left. He had read all the books that were crammed onto the shelves of his study.

Odell was a friend of some of the country's leading ministers, and the hours he had spent with E. Stanley Jones were hours he cherished all his life. He was a good shepherd to his flock, and a loyal and faithful servant of Jesus Christ.

He had his favorite hymn, and I guess I will remember him every time this hymn is sung. When we've been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing God's praise Than when we'd first begun.

I will miss him but I will never forget him. He was a good and devout man.

-W. Kenneth Goodson