A death in the Family.
Faith Ann Brown died this past Saturday after a long battle with cancer. She moved to Vinton over 40 years ago as a cub reporter for the Cedar Valley Daily Times, and while I don’t think she ever exactly planned on it, she had come home to a place she’d never been before.
When I joined the Times staff, September 1, 1989, Faith Ann had already been at the paper for five years, and by that point she had become the editor. While she was skeptical about Dick Hogan’s decision to hire me, before long I was welcomed into the Family that truly was the CVDT in those days. We were a Dream Team – Faith Ann was the editor, while the cerebral and fun-loving Doug Lindner (who would eventually become our publisher), Dan Adix was reporter (and STILL the best photographer I’ve ever worked with), and I was the guy who did the sports. For the roughly six years we all worked together, we created what we hoped was journalistic magic, five days a week, to roughly 2,000 households in the Times Area.
We were kind of like a rock band; all incredibly talented, all very sure of themselves, all determined to get our own way. It would regularly end with doors slamming, colorful vocabulary and a lot of bad feelings.
But Faith Ann was the peacemaker. She was the youngest of us, but in the newsroom she was Mama Bear/Babysitter/and teacher and or nun who scared the hell out of kids. She would endure our juvenile, testosterone-fueled nonsense for only so long. Then her voice would shake the windows.
“Grow up!” she would snap. “We’re on deadline!”
Whether it was at 8 am or 12:59 pm (1:00 deadline), there would not be another word spoken by anyone in the newsroom that wasn’t directly related to that day’s edition. We’d get the paper out, all hang around for a while, then it was off to the Ron-Da-Voo for Happy Hour and appetizer platters and we’d move on.
Faith Ann was a great writer; she was the Queen of the one-sentence lede – the first line/paragraph of a story. I can think of very few/if-any Faith Brown bylined stories that didn’t have one such lede. She was a great journalist, but also a lot more.
Back in the day, former Vinton Parks and Recreation Duane Randall used to have everyone’s favorite March Madness Pool. And he knew that the vast majority of us were huge college basketball fans, so he would bring two-dozen brackets to the office and we’d all grabbed one. While a lot of us had actually researched the tournament, she had what she considered to be the fool-proof method. The lifelong devoted Catholic would pick all of the Catholic universities. Notre Dame, Xavier, Georgetown, St. John’s, Loyola (any of them), St. AllOfTheRest, etc. No matter what we all tried to mansplain to her, she’d stick to her guns, and more often than not, she’d do better than the rest of us.
But here’s the thing: Faith Ann Marie (Confirmation name) Brown was not just someone who was moving here for a career stepping stone; once she was here, she became one of us. Once you got to know her, she was your friend. Everyone was “Honey” or “Sweetheart” or “Douglas”, “Daniel” and “Jeffory”. And while she loved her family and her home town of West Bend, once she got to Vinton, it too became home.
She would give you the shirt off her back and expect nothing in return. When Angie and I re-founded the Eagle 20 years ago, one of the first people I called was Faith Ann. When I told what we were up to, the first thing out her mouth was “I’ll take City Council (her favorite beat), and typeset press releases and legals.”
She just wanted to be there.
Faith Ann was also one of the most outwardly positive people I’ve ever known. She could have fun anywhere, with anyone. She was a joy to be around, even in the latter stages of her life.
We’re sad now; sad that our friend is gone. The sun doesn’t seem as bright and wind seems to blow a little colder. This coming Saturday, Faith Ann’s Celebration of Life will be held, and those of us who attend will be initially sad. But soon we’ll all be swapping Faith Ann stories, and just like she always did, she will once again make everyone around her smile.
Just like she always did…
