TUSCALOOSA | Beloved schoolteacher Anna Elizabeth Brown died August 4, 2004 at her home. Burial at Evergreen Cemetery.
Miss Brown was born October 31, 1908, the daughter of Pelham D. Brown and Carrie Hamner Brown, both whom preceded her in death. She is survived by one first cousin, Ruth Green of Sheffield, Ala., Lucy Jackson, whom she thought of as a niece, of Montgomery, Ala. and many other relatives and friends. During Miss Brown’s declining years, Jean Ousley of Tuscaloosa was not only a caregiver but also a special and close friend.
As a member of First Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa for 85 years, she participated in the W.M.U. and taught in the Adult Sunday School Department. She was actively engaged in many community organizations, serving twice as President of the Tuscaloosa Pilot Club and participating in the Colonial Dames of the 17th Century.
Miss Brown was educated in the Tuscaloosa Public Schools and except for one brief Educational Work Shop in Kentucky, she received all of her formal education at the University of Alabama, earning her bachelors degree in 1930 and her Masters degree in 1932. She was a member of Delta Delta Delta social sorority.
She is most fondly remembered by the many generations of Tuscaloosa students she called “her little lambs", whose lived were touched during her teaching career with the English Department at Tuscaloosa High School and Tuscaloosa Junior High, beginning in 1930 and continuing for 40 years, retiring in 1970. She required hundreds of students to spell “separate" and memorize from MacBeth lines “ double, double, toil and trouble", “out, out brief candle" and “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow". In recent years, she softly recited “What Is So Rare As A Day In June" and “Tell Me Not In Mournful Numbers". She recalled seeing students leave for WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, and their requests for her to send her study sheets “to give us something to keep our minds on". In 1999, she was honored on her 90th birthday by Tuscaloosa declaring “Miss Anna Brown Day" with a reception attended by over 1,400 former students and well wishers hosted by the THS class of 1952 dedicating the Anna E. Brown classroom in the historic Tuscaloosa High School on 21st Avenue.
Memorials may be made to the First Baptist Church of Tuscaloosa .
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