George Ii Brown ’37

GEORGE BROWN, grandson of King Kamehameha's prime minister, died in a nursing home in Hawaii Apr. 28, 1993. His wife, Julia, died in 1987, as did a daughter Julia in 1969. He left son George and daughters Irene (first daughter in three generations) and Debbie and six grandchildren.

At Hotchkiss, George was involved in football, glee club, track, and dramatics. At Princeton, he majored in engineering, was on the freshman crew and swimming teams, and was a member of Cap and Gown.

After graduation, he took his engineering training to the job of surveying on a Hawaiian sugar plantation, then management of the John Ii Estate, interrupted by three years in the Navy. He was assigned to the Fleet Weather Central at Pearl Harbor, and was later discharged as a lieutenant. The family company was sold in 1950 to Hawaiian Pineapple Company. The governor of Hawaii appointed him chairman of the State Board of Agriculture and Conservation in 1961, and in 1967 he led a drive to acquire the Valley of the Sacred Pools on Mauihome of a bird thought to be extinct for 71 years. He was active in the Brown Fund of Hawaii mutual fund and was chairman of Central Y.M.C.A. Honolulu, treasurer of the Princeton Alumni Assn. of Hawaii for many years, and later president. He caught a 440lb. marlin in 1956.

His home in Hawaii included a fourposter missionary bed with fertility carvings; a preserved black bird with one orange feather in its tail, used to make King Kamehameha's cloak and long extinct; and many Hawaiian antiquaries. His ancestors' land is now Pearl Harbor.

All our aloha sympathies go to his children and grandchildren.

The Class of 1937