Simple Johnstown farmer kept his cup full

By Ardis Briggs
The Johnstown Breeze

JOHNSTOWN – He was a farm boy come home.

Military service took him away from the Johnstown farm where he grew up, and making a living kept him away for years, but Mel Brown returned to the farmland he loved in 1973.

He and wife Nadean settled into their country home on a lakeshore several miles north of where he grew up. There, he ran his business – Mel Brown Farm Supply – enjoying the company of old acquaintances and new alike. Life was good, and as he liked to say, “I’ve been blessed.”

He was a farm boy gone home.

Mr. Brown died last Friday night, April 24, after fighting a battle against cancer for more than 20 years. He was 83.

He was born July 3, 1925, on the Brown homestead southwest of town.

Life was hard but good -– and it changed drastically in 1941, when his father died in a farming accident. Robert Brown’s widow, Cora, and their son, Mel, who was only 16, moved off the farm into town. Mel later joined his two brothers, Harold and Bob, in military service. Mel graduated from Johnstown High School in the spring of 1943 and left for the Marines in the fall.

He met and married Nadean after being discharged in 1946 but was called back into military service some years later because of the Korean War. He stayed stateside that time, serving in California. The couple, along with daughter, Bonnie, and son, Martin, lived in California for 20 years, then moved to Waco, Texas, before finally returning to Johnstown.

The death of his dad, the war . . . it would seem a life with that much adversity for one so young would harden a person. But Mr. Brown saw it differently. The death of his father, he said last fall, caused him to grow in his faith. Serving at Pearl Harbor, watching the bodies being recovered from the bombed ships in the harbor, deepened his prayer life.

And marrying a woman of deep faith gave him a partner in life with the same goals and dreams. Their faith and love for family and people in general was the center of their life together. They were active in the United Methodist Church wherever they lived, and in the lay ministry of that denomination. They were both active in the community, and Mr. Brown’s business associates more times than not turned into fast friends.

His beloved Nadean died in June 2007. They were together almost 60 years.

Before it became the vogue, Mr. Brown wrote his personal mission statement: “To be an effective witness for Jesus Christ in all that I think, say and do, and to have a positive, wholesome, constructive effect on every life that I touch.”

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