{"id":101201,"date":"2018-02-26T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/patsy-ruth-howard-brown-a-longtime-pillar-of-cortez-dies-at-age-85\/"},"modified":"2018-02-26T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T20:00:00","slug":"patsy-ruth-howard-brown-a-longtime-pillar-of-cortez-dies-at-age-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/patsy-ruth-howard-brown-a-longtime-pillar-of-cortez-dies-at-age-85\/","title":{"rendered":"Patsy Ruth Howard Brown, a longtime \u2018pillar\u2019 of Cortez, dies at age 85"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Dorothy
Dorothy Wayt and Anne Marie Owens award Patsy Brown, center, a plaque for her 25 years of service to the Cortez Cultural Center.<\/span>Courtesy photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Patsy Ruth Howard Brown passed away at age 85 after a life of service on Feb. 13. Cortez has lost a prominent member of the community.<\/p>\n

Brown was raised on a ranch in Powderhorn, graduated from Gunnison High School and received her bachelor\u2019s degree in elementary education from Western State College in Gunnison.<\/p>\n

Brown began her teaching career in Towaoc, then taught in Anchorage, Alaska, and returned to Cortez, where she would teach at Mesa, Manaugh and Kemper elementary schools.<\/p>\n

Her students loved her, according to Brown\u2019s daughter, Tammy Kingman.<\/p>\n

Kingman said her mother was a good teacher and very firm, and was said to have been one of the last Colorado teachers to receive the lifetime teaching certificate.<\/p>\n

After Tammy was born, Brown took a break from teaching and ended up visiting The Cortez Journal newsroom often, then owned by her husband, Russell Brown\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

Byron McKelvie, who worked at The Cortez Journal for 33 years, knew her from The Cortez Journal and The Cultural Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was very nice, a friend to all of us,\u201d McKelvie said.<\/p>\n

Suzy Meyer, longtime employee and publisher at The Cortez Journal, said Brown was like a \u201cden mother\u201d in the newsroom.<\/p>\n

Brown returned to teaching in 1984 and retired in 1990. After retirement, she was encouraged by Buford Wayt to volunteer at the Cortez Cultural Center.<\/p>\n

She took Wayt\u2019s advice and began volunteering at the Cultural Center and found a new passion for the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was the volunteer coordinator, and if anyone called to say they couldn\u2019t make their shift, she would cover it,\u201d Kingman said. \u201cFor 25 years, that was her passion, and she loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Kingman, Brown was also involved in women\u2019s clubs and organizations, such as Beta Sigma Phi, a nonacademic sorority with 200,000 members, and the PEO Sisterhood, an international women\u2019s organization that works to provide educational opportunities for female students. She also was involved with the Emblem Club 261 of Cortez, a patriotic club that is affiliated with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and with American Legion Ladies Auxiliary.<\/p>\n

Her friend and coworker at the Cultural Center, executive director Rebecca Levy, described Brown as a \u201cpillar of the greater Cortez community\u201d in a letter to the editor.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was many things to many people \u2013 a teacher, a friend, a leader, an occasional opponent and an advocate for cultural tolerance, locally grown journalism and lifelong education \u2013 to name a few,\u201d Levy wrote.<\/p>\n

Levy also commented on Brown\u2019s giving nature calling her selfless and impactful.<\/p>\n

In 1997, Brown received Cortez\u2019s Citizen of the Year award. Kingman said her mother was honored.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was extremely surprised and very humbled and a bit embarrassed,\u201d Kingman said. \u201cShe did not like a lot of limelight on her; she did things because she wanted to, and she never expected anything in return.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s giving nature comes up a lot in conversations about her life. One of her best friends, Madonna Gonzales, sometime felt she was a saint.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know she was not, but that is how it felt,\u201d Gonzales said. \u201cThe main thing is that she was a lady that gave of herself \u2013 to her community, friends and family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonzales said she is already greatly missed, \u201cI can tell you anymore than anyone in the community how much she was loved in the community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

According to Brown\u2019s obituary<\/a>, a service in celebration of her life will be at the Cortez Cultural Center on April 14 at 2 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018She did things because she wanted to, and she never expected anything in return\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-101201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101201"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=101201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}