MARCH 19, 2009 ISSUE
Remembering Wade Brown
Wade Brown’s autobiography remains a classic look at 20th century Watauga County.
When Wade Brown opened his law office in downtown in 1931, about 1,300 people called Boone home. Appalachian State Teachers College was a small mountain school, barely known across the state. Tourists were a rarity, there was no hospital, and employment, other than on a farm, was hard to come by.
On March 9, Wade Brown died at age 101. He left behind a community, county and region that has boomed in the seven decades since the Blowing Rock native arrived in Boone—and much of that growth and development can be traced directly back to his influence and hard work.
Close Watauga Medical Center. Shrink ASU. Rip up Highway 105. End the run of Horn in the West. Turn Boone Golf Course back into farmland. Shut the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce. Eliminate the local hospice program. Do all those things, and you will just begin to get an idea of what Boone would be like without the influence of Wade Brown.
Even though he lived for more than a century, Brown was never a person to look back much. He did for his autobiography, Recollections and Reflections, which Parkway Publishers released in 1997, but that was a rare event in his life. Brown preferred the unfolding future to the past.
He lived by one motto, as he often said—“think positively.” In numerous interviews and chats this writer had with Brown over almost two decades, he never once said a harsh word about another person or event, on or off the record.
The Brown family in 1955. Wade and Gilma Baity Brown with their three children (left to right), Wade Edward Brown Jr., Sarah Baity Brown and Margaret Rose Brown.
Perhaps appropriately for a man who did so much to develop the county, Brown was born amidst the first major development in Watauga’s history. His father, Jefferson Davis Brown, acted as agent for Moses Cone, and made the land purchases that built his estate, now part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. At the time, the family lived on the estate, later settling on a farm where Alpen Acres motel near Blowing Rock now stands. He was the youngest of 10 children.
The year 1931 was a turning point in Brown’s life. He graduated from the Wake Forest School of Law and had passed the bar exam. On July 5 that year, he opened his first law office in a rented—and unheated—space for $5 per month in the Blackburn Hotel, which was located where Ram’s Rack now has its store. He bought a used Model T Ford for $50 to commute back and forth from Blowing Rock.
When the winter of 1931-32 arrived, the cold drove him out of Blackburn Hotel and into the real estate office of Clyde Eggers—the father, grandfather and great-grandfather of the lawyers who have made up the firm of Eggers, Eggers, Eggers & Eggers in Boone.
But these were Depression times, and Boone was a tough place for a young, inexperienced lawyer to make a living. At the end of his first year as an attorney, Brown’s total income was $127.73. Things began to look up, however, and in a few years he argued his first case before the North Carolina Supreme Court—and won. The result of that victory was funding for the construction of the old Cove Creek School, which remains a center of that community.
A Mentor
In those early years, Brown became friends with Dr. B.B. Dougherty, co-founder of ASU. The two men shared a vision for developing the college and town, and Dr. Dougherty became the younger man’s mentor. Together, they worked hard to get state funding for the college.
Building the Community
Even as he was building his law practice, Brown looked for ways to improve the community around him. The first step: pressing the commissioners to hire a county agent. That was the start of the present Cooperative Extension in the county. Brown then worked with local merchants and business people to form organizations to promote and improve the community, which eventually became the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce in 1949.
With a break to serve as an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Brown would continue to work for the development of the county and its towns for the rest of his life. A list of the achievements in which he either spearheaded the effort or played an important role include:
-Creating the Horn in the West outdoor drama
-Construction of the chapel at the local prison
-Formation of the county hospice
-Development of the Boone Golf Course, which opened in 1959
-Promotion of the local ski industry
-Visioning and eventual construction of Highway 105 in Foscoe
-Local economic and tourism development
An Active Life
Brown remained an active and enthused member of the community long past the age at which most people retired. Already past 80, his walks in local woods revealed an amazing discovery—the first beaver dam seen in Boone in 200 years. He quickly led a reporter, who had to struggle to keep up with him, to the secret spot.
Early in his career as an attorney, Brown and his then-girlfriend, Euzelia Smart, had gone their separate ways. She was heading to Columbia University in New York City; he wanted to remain in Watauga County.
Wade Brown’s first law office, which he opened in 1931, was located in the lower right of the then-modern Blackburn Hotel, across from the courthouse.
Two years later, he married Gilma Baity, and they would raise four children over 53 years of marriage.
After Mrs. Brown died in 1989, Brown got a list of some of his classmates from Mars Hill Junior College and contacted them, hoping to arrange a reunion. That never happened—but one of the names on the list was that of Euzelia Smart, who had never married, and the two renewed their relationship and wed in February 1990. After a period of ill health, she died in 1995.
But even as he neared his 90th birthday, little seemed to slow Brown down. He traveled on goodwill trips around the world. At 91, he joined a mission group for a trip to Ukraine.
As many honors—too many to list here—accrued and the years finally began to take their toll, Brown had a final gift for the community. In July 2000, 69 years after opening his first law office, he gave the High Country Conservancy a conservation easement on 31 acres on top of Big Yarnall Mountain, overlooking Boone. Knowing that the development he worked so hard on would continue, he wanted this peak to remain “as God made it” forever.
Continuing Influence
Boone, about the time Mr. Brown began his legal career. He played a major role in transforming the small, rural community into a prosperous city, 10 times larger than when he arrived in 1931.
Living to the age of 101, Brown saw those he had mentored serve their roles in the community and then retire, or even pass away. Now a new generation carries on the work of civic service and improvement; each generation will look back to Wade Edward Brown as a model for them to follow.
That July 5 morning, he reached Boone on a dirt road; he lived to see Highway 421 four-laned. He opened the door of his new office across from an old courthouse; he lived to see a new, and expanded, courthouse. On that morning, as his brother Connor drove him to his first day of work as an attorney, they passed the fields that would become Boone Golf Course and Watauga Medical Center. They went through what is now the intersection of Highway 321 and Highway 105. In the almost 78 years that would follow that morning, dreams and visions became reality—and our county was left in the permanent debt of this remarkable man.
Community Interest
News & Notes
Events
Arts & Entertainment
