Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Monday, August 04, 2008 at 08:21:55 :
Independent-Journal
Wednesday, December 15, 1976
Page 4
HAZEL WISHARD BROWN
Hazel Wishard Brown – newswoman, prize-winning columnist, mother, musician and widow of the late Roy A. Brown, co-founder of the Independent Journal – died yesterday. She was 82.
Mrs. Brown, who had lived in San Rafael for 32 years after she and her husband moved to Marin in 1937, had been a resident of the Tamalpais retirement residence in Greenbrae since 1969.
She was born in Bloomfield, Iowa, the third child of businessman Henry Wishard. She got her first work experience in shops and other businesses run by her father – a movie house, shoe store, harness shop, buggy, wagon and automobile shop, vaudeville house and hotel.
Among her friends and classmates in grammar and high schools was a neighbor, Roy A. Brown. The two were married in 1916.
Three years later, the couple moved to Sanger, a town 15 miles east of Fresno, where Brown sold Model T Fords. Within two years he had entered the newspaper business, buying a half interest in the weekly Sanger Herald.
Mrs. Brown went to work on the Herald shortly after the birth of a daughter, Barbara. She did her beat reporting, sold ads and taught herself t he newspaper business by reading every journalism book she could find.
Soon she launched a column, Funny, which ultimately won her an award from the National Editorial Association as one of the 11 best writers on a weekly newspaper, the only woman on the list. She also was recognized by Fresno State University, which named her an honorary member of Alpha Phi Gamma fraternity.
Mrs. Brown and her family moved to San Rafael in 1937 when her husband and two partners – Justus F. Craemer and William O. Hart – bought the San Rafael Independent. Eleven years later, Brown and Craemer merged the Independent with the Marin Journal to form the Independent-Journal, with Brown becoming publisher.
Mrs. Brown continued her news career on the Independent, taking over as club news editor. She found time to handle public relations for the First Presbyterian Church of San Rafael, the Pi Beta Phi sorority and PEO Sisterhood, and was a Charter member of NE, P.E.O., member of the San Rafael Book Club and a past member of the San Rafael Improvement Club.
She was an accomplished musician and lyric soprano soloist much in demand at church gatherings, weddings and funerals.
She is survived by a son, Wishard A. Brown, who succeeded his father as I-J publisher; a daughter, Barbara Brown Leibert of San Anselmo; a sister, Helen Hall, of Bloomfield, Iowa; five grandchildren, Karen Brown Phillips, Jane Leibert Fenton, Edmund T. Leibert, Wishard Keppel Brown and Kevan R. Brown, and seven great-grandchildren.
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