Keene Clagett Brown ’50

AFTER 43 YEARS of gutsy determination overcoming health problems, Keene (Bubbles) Brown succumbed to cancer and was finally laid to rest Mar. 23, 1990. Although studying with the Class only freshman year, Keene kept an active interest in classmates and friends, corning to many reunions and mini-reunions despite severe physical handicaps.

Reared on a beautiful family farm overlooking the Susquehanna River in Maryland, Keene attended Gilman and graduated from Hotchkiss. At Princeton he played on the freshman football squad and roomed in 1901 Hall with Bo Kelly, Paul Van Dyke, and Joe Parsons. In the summer of 1947 he was victimized in a near-fatal auto accident, which left him unconscious for almost 90 days. During his long rehabilitation from the accident, including time at the Rusk Inst. in N.Y., he took correspondence courses from the Univ. of Chicago and graduated from Columbia Univ. in 1962. On a spread bordering the George Washington National Forest, near Amherst, Va., he went into farming. He also became an investor in, and editor of, a weekly newspaper there, THE NEW ERA PROGRESS, which was sold in 1981. Among his other interests, he was director of the Broventure Co., a family company.

The Class extends sympathy to his surviving family: two children, Johanna Wendel and Donaldson Barksdale Brown; a sister, Greta Brown Layton; and three brothers, Frank D. Brown, Bruce F. Brown, and Vaughn W. Brown.