What a response! It makes sense that a junior high girl who could run her own Rye farm solo would go on to do great things. This photo shows Vivian H. Brown (1912-1997) atop a hay wagon in 1924. While no one alive recalled a vivacious Vivian at age 12, a dozen readers responded to last week’s photo with stories of her later life as a Navy WAVE commander and longtime high school teacher. “She was memorable,” one reader noted, and it’s easy to see why.
The greatest cache of information about Vivian Brown came from her cousin Kristin Keene, who came up with no less than 19 newspaper clippings from a family scrapbook. In a youthful media appearance as a member of the North Hampton Junior Women’s Clubs of New Hampshire, she was described as “attractive Vivian Brown.”
A 1929 graduate of Portsmouth High School, she went on to teach junior high and high school students. During World War II, Vivian was among the early graduates of the U.S. Navy WAVE (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) Midshipman School. Lt. Brown, in uniform, posed proudly in the local newspaper while serving as a wartime instructor in navigation and naval weapons.
In 1949, Vivian received her master’s degree in business administration from Boston University. Years later, while head of the Business Department at Portsmouth High School, she was again in the headlines. Although the newspaper still referred to her as “Miss Brown,” she was promoted to commander in the Naval Reserve, then the highest permanent rank in the Navy a woman could achieve. One of her male high school geometry students later became Brown’s commanding officer.
“I remember her as always conducting herself in a business-like manner including her dress, which was always a suit and usually a medium shade of blue,” a former student recalls today. “‘She was strict and checked to see if your fingernails were too long, which was a no-no at that time [for typing and stenography students]. Also your hair had to be neat. I had naturally curly hair which had a tendency to frizz and one day she suggested that I cut my hair – and I did.”
“Vivian Brown, with or without her naval trappings,” a Portsmouth Herald editor later wrote in a tepid tribute, “deserves the admiration, thanks, and respect of us all.”
After 30 years as a teacher and as many in military service, including work at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, “Miss Brown” (again) was appointed as a University of New Hampshire trustee in 1971. In her 1997 obituary, Brown was described as a descendant of some of the region’s founding families. A world traveler, the newspaper noted, she was an avid photographer and gardener, and a member of the North Hampton historical Society.
“She had a great impact on my future years of education,” another reader told this reporter. “She had previously been in the service before coming to the classroom and, boy, did we sit up straight when she came into the room!”
All this from a photo of an 11-year-old girl I found in an online auction. Ain’t history fun?
Copyright J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.
Who Remembers Vivian Brown?