George's Legacy Lives on...

I thought I would share how George entered into my life twice over the past week. It was very interesting and as George always did in real life, I was left humbled and better for the time spent together.

The first time George said hello was when I was turning in my class A uniform at fire station 3 so it could get some modifications. I was emptying the pockets and I found a picture of George in the front breast pocket from his funeral. Just looking at him again brought back some very fond memories of his smile and infectiously positive attitude he brought to work each and every day. I was tired. It had been a long week but just seeing his face motivated me to put my chin up and do my best to spread the same positive attitude he always shared with me.

It wasn't long after that I was at fire station 33 in the City of Fairfax working with a new paramedic intern. We were studying some EKGs and I went to my archive of books to find some material to help him out. Low and behold, I found a classic reference book titled ECG Workout, circa 1985 that was perfect for the task at hand. When I opened the book I saw the unmistakable penmanship of none other than George F. Brown where he had written his name on the inside cover. I thought about how George said hello just a few days prior. I took a moment and thanked him for all of his help mentoring me so that I could pass on what he had taught me to another.

George was such an amazing person and paramedic. I just thought I would share how, once again, he continues to reach out and lend a helping hand just like he did so many times when he was with us.

Thank you George!

Craig

From Beth Bull, George's cousin through Joy and the Pastor at his Funeral

The following is the letter Beth wrote to George and read at his funeral. Thank-you Beth for everything you did, and how you shared George with all of us that day.  God Bless!

Although I am the pastor present, today I am first and foremost George’s cousin.  And so rather than give a traditional message now, I am going to first read a letter I have written to George, and then at the end I will share just a few brief words of encouragement to all of us here….

 

Dear George,

 

I’ve struggled to write this to you, because I’ve had so much trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that you’re really gone.  There’s still some part of me that feels if I don’t write this, then it won’t be true…that somehow we can rewind time back to when you were doing well, and a full recovery was expected.  That was how it was supposed to be – you home again and thriving…and making more plans for how you would enjoy your retirement with your beloved Joy, and all your family, friends and neighbors…all the people you loved so much.  You were one of the most alive people we knew.

 

My memories of you go back to the 1970’s when I was a kid and you were engaged to my cousin Joy.  You came with Joy and her family to our house for Christmas in Connecticut.  Those Christmases were my favorite, growing up, because the house was so full of family, and you added such fun to it all.  One year, you had made a sketch of the little church my father pastored that was next door to the parsonage where we lived, and you made a Christmas tree ornament from that sketch…a ceramic Christmas ball with the church cut out inside, and a place for a light to go in the back so that it seemed to shine out of the steeple.  You dated it ‘Christmas 1975’ and it became the most treasured ornament our family owns to this day.  The next year, you and Joy were married and I was thrilled to be a junior bridesmaid in the wedding.  Thirty-seven years later, it’s hard to remember our family without you. 

 

At first it just seemed cruel and unfortunate timing for your precious family that your viewings and funeral would fall on Father’s Day weekend…but as we prepared to celebrate who you were, I realized that of course a wonderful father and pop-pop are at the very heart of the man you were.  Even your children’s friends often saw you that way, saying you treated them like your own.  As I’ve read what countless people outside the family have written about you (friends, neighbors, colleagues), I’ve seen the same theme…words like: mentor, teacher, coach, father-figure, sharer of wisdom, rescuer, encourager, inspiration, friend.  You made all of us feel safe, loved and accepted…and as though everything was going to be alright.  You knew how to make us feel that you believed in us, and that what was important to us was important to you, too.  And you did it all with a twinkle in your eye and a joyful sense of mischief that made us laugh.

 

When I finally got married three and a half years ago, I couldn’t wait for my husband Rob to meet you.  We drove to Maryland for a visit, and while I was chatting with Joy and Gay in the house, you took Rob outside to show him something.  When I asked him later what you were talking about out there, he told me you were welcoming him into the family.  It meant so much to him, as my father and Joy and Gay’s father had passed away before we were married, and so you were the only man in our family who really did that for Rob.  He felt a connection with you right away.  But the next thing I knew, you were both walking back into the house, each holding some sort of iron ball connected to a chain…and you were saying proudly:  “I’ve just been welcoming Rob into the ball and chain club!”  How I wish I had a picture of it.  I couldn’t stop laughing.

 

The irony in that, of course, was that there was probably no one who made marriage look LESS like a ball and chain than you did.  You adored Joy, and she knew it every moment of your life together…as did all of us who knew you.  Occasionally people made fun of how you still loved to hold her hand after 30+ years together…but it was a big part of why everyone loved to be around the two of you…it made us realize what life could be like.

 

Your son-in-law Scott chose the Scripture that Gay read so beautifully for you today.  In it, Jesus describes what our lives could be like…the way life is meant to be, when we let Him live through us.  The world around us tells us things like: hang tough, never let them see you sweat, be a winner (even if it means stepping on others to get ahead), don’t ever let anyone think you’re wrong (even if you are), and ‘don’t get mad, get even.’  But Jesus tells us that the blessed people, the ones with whom it will go well, are the ones who are humble, who trust in God rather than in their own strength…the blessed ones, says Jesus, are the ones who rather than hold a grudge, forgive…who rather than pass judgment, know their own weaknesses and show mercy…the ones who instead of being power-hungry, are God-hungry…the ones who lose what is dearest to them, only to experience something dearer still: the comfort and love of God who will never leave them…the blessed ones are the ones “who are content with who they are – no more and no less – and so find themselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought” (Eugene Peterson).  The blessed ones are willing to be vulnerable about their humanity, because they know the strength of the God that holds them.

 

That was you, George.  You were surely among the blessed…the ones who let the Spirit of Jesus live through them. Emeline has told me of how you read Bible stories to her and Eric while they were growing up, and how what she understood about Jesus, she understood because of what she saw of Him at work in you.

 

You were humble.  Joy never knew when you had made Captain at the Fire Department until she found out by accident.  And when she asked you about it, you brushed it off as no big deal.  That wasn’t where your confidence lay.  You saw a lot of very difficult things in your years of service as a paramedic…the heartbreaking and the traumatic…and while you saved countless lives and brought comfort to countless more, I know you never lost sight of Whose hands ultimately hold us all.  You knew there was a Power greater than your own…and you knew that power belonged to your Heavenly Father. 

 

Most people close to you knew of your love for the National Cathedral, and the connection you had there through your uncle who was an honorary canon.  You worked with some of the artists who adorned that awe-inspiring building, and a replica of your angel from one of the doorways is standing beside you today.  I don’t think the National Cathedral has ever had or will ever have a tour guide as good as you were, George, when you took friends and family to see it, and shared all the little-known facts and stories you knew!  You had us marveling and at the same time laughing out loud in that sacred space.  I think of the famous Scottish author, and inspiration to C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald who said:  “It is the heart that is not yet sure of its God, that is afraid to laugh in his presence.”  You weren’t afraid, George…you were sure of your Heavenly Father’s love for you, and therefore you were free to laugh and play in His Presence. You reveled in the beauty of the cathedral…but it wasn’t the art alone, or even your family heritage alone which made it so special to you…it was the Presence of God you sensed there. And that Presence went with you wherever you went. 

 

A friend of yours told me of the time they took you to Bush Gardens in Canada, and the sight of so many beautiful flowers all in one place made you cry.  You stood in the center of it all with tear-filled eyes.  The beauty of God’s handiwork in nature did more than inspire your gardening, it touched your heart…like a gift from One you loved…which, of course, is what it was.  Your son Eric insisted that the flowers here today be of more than one kind and color, knowing how they moved you so.

 

Your awareness of God seemed to be heightened in the last year, as your daughter and son-in-law experienced the tragic loss of one of their twin sons five hours after birth, and the miraculous survival and health of the other.  You later spoke of the power of prayer with an even stronger conviction, and gratitude seemed to overflow your heart as you spoke of how everyone’s prayers had carried you all through that difficult time.  You had to say goodbye to your grandson Luke way too soon, and yet you were thankful to God in the midst of the pain…when I saw this, I couldn’t help but think that you were closer to Jesus than I was.

 

When you received the cancer diagnosis, you continued to sound upbeat, though I know you were scared sometimes, too.  You told Rob and me that it was “another bump in the road”…and you talked of God’s plan for your life, and how sometimes it is not what you expected it to be, but that God had a plan nonetheless.  You were choosing to trust Him. 

 

We sent you a prayer blanket before your surgery – a blanket we had prayed over, that you would know yourself wrapped in God’s love and ours whenever you used it…and that you might sense God’s healing hand upon you.  You started to cry whenever you spoke of it, and you told me how you had kept it on you throughout your time in the hospital and the recovery time at home.  You said you could feel the energy from it…which told me God had heard our prayers and the Holy Spirit was ministering to you through the blanket, when we couldn’t be there to love on you ourselves.  The blanket was still on you when you went home to be with the Lord.

 

I have to admit that I have struggled with this all week…how God could seem to be answering all our prayers for you, and then take you from us….how you could feel His Presence with you so strongly, and yet not be healed. 

 

And yet, you are healed…more healed in heaven than you would have been here with us…more fully alive, more joy-filled and free.  And I can almost see you there, with Jesus, looking at me and laughing…as if to say: “Did you really think this story was just about me and not the One who made me??  And do you really think this is the end of that story?  This world was not my home…and it’s not your home either…there is a bigger picture and a grander plan…” 

 

You chose to trust God, George, even when you didn’t understand His plan…thank you for showing me that I can choose to trust Him, too...even now. 

And for reminding me that God’s Glory awaits us all…glory even greater than the National Cathedral or Bush Gardens…and that there will be no more tears and no more pain in that beautiful place…for as the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, “now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (I Corinthians 13:12)….then we, too, will see the face of the One from whom all these blessings have flowed…In the meantime, may He draw us all closer to Himself, and so in Christ, in a mysterious way, George, closer to you.

 

With love always, and in anticipation of greater adventures and laughs one day in a new land,

Your cousin Beth Ann

 

 

 

 

 

And now a few words for us…

Perhaps one of our worst fears for someone we love is that somehow at the end of their days they were alone or afraid.

 

We don’t have to fear that for George.

 

His confidence in the unceasing, unbroken, constant presence of Jesus should be our confidence too.

 

“Because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5

 

Jesus also promised, “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” John 14:2

 

That is wonderful – but like the apostle Thomas we might be inclined to ask – how would George or any of us know how to get to this place that has been prepared?

 

Jesus reassures us, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

 

How can we rely upon such a promise?

 

If we had only ourselves to rely upon – that would be a different question.

 

But fortunately, as George knew, our confidence does not lay in what we have done.

 

Our confidence lies in what Jesus has done for us.

 

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

 

In Jesus’ willingness to be forsaken by God, to bear upon His body the full weight of

·       all our regrets,

·       all the things we know we should have done,

·       all the things we wish we had never done,

 

by taking upon himself all our sin,

 

Jesus reversed the power of suffering and death.

 

And we, who were powerless to save ourselves, are now eternally restored in the arms of our heavenly Father.

 

Jesus stood at the tomb of his friend Lazarus and said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-27

 

Why might we believe this?

 

Because Jesus also said

that He would rise from the dead

 

and all the evidence on that first Easter Morning

would suggest that He did.

 

So in all our sadness – let’s not lose heart.

 

We truly can have confidence -

 

1) For George and for us – God’s loving purposes pursue us.

 

 As the apostle Paul wrote:“…for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” Philippians 2:13

 

God still has a plan for us, and it is a good plan.

 

2) For George and for us – God’s loving presence is constant.

 

“Because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5

 

3) And His promise of eternal life is unconditional, freely given to all who would receive it.

 

“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-27

 

Like George, let us choose to believe…let us choose to trust the God whose love poured through George’s life and has not let us go. 

 

AMEN.

 

Cat Palanker, lifelong friend of Emeline, tells us about George

Emeline and I became friends in second grade and have stayed friends through out these 20 some years.  Through out these years I have had the honor of knowing Mr.Brown.

My early memories are of Em's birthday Halloween trick-or-treat slumber parties where Mr. Brown was brave enough to take about 6 seven year olds trick-or-treating.  His humorous yet spooky stories were just right- not too scary so that we were not up all night, but scary enough for the occasion.

Mr. Brown, being the awesome dad he was, went camping with our Girl Scout troop.  On this adventure he saved us from the bats by taking the "tent" housing the bat family, fixed my finger from a pocket knife misshap, and made me feel calm, loved, and cared for when I was hurt and far from my home and family.  I look at the scar on my thumb each day and remember the kindness Mr. Brown treated me with and smile.  It reminds me to treat my patients with the same love and support.  I know there are many others he helped feel cared for when scared too.  (I also remember laughing about this trip with him as a now 30 year old!).

As we grew older Mr. Brown delighted in watching his kid's friends grow up.  His kindness helped many of us and caused us all to keep in touch.  Sometimes I think we all came to see Mr. And Mrs. Brown and seeing Em was just icing on the cake on her trips back home.

I also remember introducing him to my son Lucas when he was about 2 months old.  Seeing the joy in his eyes as he asked if he could hold him, his kind touch, and playfulness made me smile.  I was so proud and happy to share my son with George, and I could tell he was too.

George was an amazing father, husband, pop pop, and friend.  I feel blessed to have experienced his caring, humor, and joy.

In closing- I can't remember if we wrote this at a sleep over or on a camp out- but when we were young a group of Em's friends wrote a poem about her dad- Mr. Brown.  Here's our silly little song:
Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown
He turns your frown upside down!

How true that song is!

Catherine "Cat" Palanker

37 years ago today

37 years ago today George and Joy were married. Happy anniversary! 

A message from Joy today,

Happy Anniversary to my forever love, my best friend, the man that I could talk about anything to, who knew me inside and out, and who loved me no matter what. I love you George Brown, and I look forward to the day I can be with you for eternity and never have to say goodbye again.

What a Dad!

This story comes from one of Emeline's Friends, Anh Nguyen.

It's not much of a memory, but I LOVED visiting your house during middle school and especially high school.  Your parents, especially your dad and his sense of humor made it much more enjoyable, and I always looked forward to it since you were the only friend with whom I could have sleepovers.  Whatever it is your parents told my parents it sold my parents on me staying over.

Daddy Always Knew What to do.

A glimpse of George through the eyes of Emeline Gridley, his daughter. 

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the vacations we would take as Eric and I were growing up, particularly to Cape Cod.  Those are among my fondest memories.  My idea of paradise is being a kid again, walking the beach with my little hand in his big hand, collecting seashells and looking for all the fun things that washed up on the shoreline.  He made every moment feel special, and was always there for special moments.  He never missed any of me or Eric's milestones, and was always there choking back tears during our prom's, graduations, my wedding and the birth of all of my children.  He was even there when it was hard.

My idea of paradise is being a kid again, walking the beach with my little hand in his big hand

The photo below is a picture he took of myself, my husband Scott, daughter Claire and son Luke, of the moment that Luke passed away.  I was not really aware of it at the moment, but I am SO very grateful that he thought ahead and decided to grab the camera to record this special moment for us so I can always have it.  He was always thinking ahead even when it was difficult, something that his training as a EMT/ Firefighter really helped prepare him for.  

If you know my dad, you know his grand kids and his kids were pretty much the center of his life, so it's even hard for me to imagine how difficult this must have been for him to watch me have to bear this moment, as well as watch his sweet little grand baby slip away.  That's why I think this picture stands as a perfect testimony of his love for all of us of his selflessness and caring, and why I treasure it so very much as the perfect culmination of two memories of two of the most important people in my life....my father and my son.

If you know my dad, you know his grand kids and his kids were pretty much the center of his life

Early DNR & Mr. Bill

My name is Dwaine McCollum and I was privileged to work with George Brown from April 03, 1978 to June 1998. As an EMT I have an interesting call story and then a personal tale.

 

In late 1970's or early 1980, George and I were working on Ambulance 33, staffed at that time mostly with overtime. This was in addition to the Medic 03. We were dispatched to a call in or near the Fairfax Woods neighborhood for a cardiac case reported by patient’s granddaughter. We were first on scene and sure enough we had an elderly man in cardiac arrest. We started CPR, George put in an EOA (ET was pretty new then and we were not a medic unit), Medic 03 arrived and things were proceeding well. Patient had a decent EKG and it looked like one in the save column.

 

Then the man’s daughter got home - and she was not happy. He was elderly and frail, and she had intended a DNR, which (really did not exist at that time). Granddaughter should not have called EMS, but that is what folks do when “things” happen. Now we have a palaver between the family doctor on the phone and the hospital doctor via radio. No cell phones of course. Both doctors agreed to discontinue treatment and we ceased support of the patient. I watched the EKG signal fade.

 

We now entered another phase of this call. City Police arrived and did NOT like this situation. In their opinion, this looked like a license to do many things they were very uncomfortable with. Medic unit and Engine Company departed, and family wants to be with their father’s body. Police asked us, the ambulance crew to stay in the room with our former patient (and presumable maintain evidence). I was not up for all that emotion and George characteristically volunteered to stay in the room while the family said their initial good-byes. Fortunately; it all calmed down after that and we went our merry way. Funeral home picked up body and nothing further from this call. George, in all respects, was the perfect partner to have on such an interesting call.

 

Short personal story:

 

“Submitted as a parody of bad animation”, Mr. Bill burst onto Saturday Night Live in 1976 (and left SNL in 1980). George Brown did a wonderful Mr. Bill, and I missed that no one talked about this around the time of his funeral. The delight on his face, the enthusiasm in his voice, and with full hand gestures as he recreated this silly character, was quintessential George. He shared this character with Frances and I many times over the years, long after others had seemingly forgotten. (Quote from the Mr. Bill website).

 

George, you will be missed!