Mary Anne Brown, a tireless children’s advocate and former executive director of Hephzibah Children’s Association, passed away on Mother’s Day, a fitting denouement for a woman who served as a maternal figure for thousands of children impacted by abuse or neglect.
She died surrounded by family following a four-month illness. She was 80 and a resident of River Forest.
For more than four decades before retiring in 2017, she led Hephzibah. During her extraordinary tenure, the nonprofit organization grew exponentially in budget, programming, staffing and number of children and families served. Throughout her life, including during her recent hospitalization, she was greeted by children who had grown up under her care and families who credited her with helping them stay afloat during challenging times.
Raised among five siblings in a wealthy, socially prominent family in the Bal Harbour community of Miami Beach, Brown eschewed what could have been a very comfortable life to instead dedicate herself to service to others.
“You would never know she came from wealth. My mom could have had a pretty easy life with a lot of creature comforts but she didn’t do things the easy way. She had a strong moral standard, and she did things the way she thought was right,” said Cuyler Brown, her son.
After attending Catholic high school, Mary Anne Brown decided to explore life as a nun. However, while still a novice, she left the Adrian Dominican order and pursued bachelor’s and master’s degrees in childhood psychology. While doing graduate work at the University of Iowa, she met Max Brown, her lifetime partner and husband of more than 50 years.
“I remember once we were in a campus bar and from the dark bowels of the back of the bar I heard this booming voice yelling ‘hey, Mary Anne! How are ya?’ as a huge, rough looking guy came toward us. It was one of the ex-cons Mary Anne had helped. Nothing phased Mary Anne,” said her husband, laughing.
After moving to Chicago, where Max was attending law school of DePaul University, she got a job at a daycare center on the south side, in a building that also housed members of the Almighty P. Stone Nation, a notorious Chicago street gang. On her first day, the building was raided by the police. She also worked as a daycare director for a center in the South Austin community, a tenure that ended shortly after she was mugged.
Mary Anne Brown joined Hephzibah in 1976, at a time when the nonprofit was struggling and had a meager $100,000 budget. Initially, she focused her attention on enhancing the organization’s daycare programming after learning that there was a pressing need for more before and after-school care by local families with working parents.
Partnering with the Oak Park school district, Hephzibah piloted on-site programming, which was unusual at the time, at Mann and Lincoln elementary schools. The program expanded to all Oak Park elementary schools, serving more than 600 children annually on a sliding scale based on families’ ability to pay.
“While the housing program gets a lot of historical accolades, what Hephzibah did with the schools truly integrated Oak Park,” said Max Brown. “There were parents who were up in arms about ‘Hephzibah kids’ coming into their school. Mary Anne got a lot of pushback and had to take on many of the parents, some of whom later joined her board.”
She also launched, in partnership with the Oak Park Police Department, the Daycare Social Services Program to provide crisis intervention services for struggling daycare families, including housing, vocational support and legal assistance as well as direct assistance such as grocery gift certificates, clothing and school supplies.
As she became more familiar with the daycare families, she realized that several were experiencing unemployment, housing insecurity, substance abuse and domestic violence and needed foster care for their children. At the time, at-risk children in the community were transported to a centralized facility managed by the Department of Children and Family Services. Brown inaugurated in 1980 one of the first community-based foster care programs in the state to keep children close to home while protecting them from harm.
Hephzibah House offered a warm, loving haven for two dozen children with colorful bedrooms, family-style meals and a myriad of exciting programming.
“The stories of what happened to some of the kids would break anyone’s heart,” said Cuyler Brown. “But Hephzibah House was a happy place. My mom gave them so much love. I used to get jealous because everyone had a piece of my mom but she proved she didn’t have a limit to her love. She could keep on giving and it never seemed to empty her.”
Dennis and Bunny Murphy, co-owners of Poor Phil’s, a popular Oak Park restaurant, adopted the first child from Hephzibah’s foster program. In 1982 they welcomed Peter, 5, into their home. They subsequently adopted Peter’s three siblings, expanding their family of three previously adopted children.
“It was really unheard of at that time for a family to adopt four children,” Peter said. “But when I got to Hephzibah House, Mary Anne told me that she was going to make sure that my siblings and I stayed together. I remember the day she packed up my things and drove me in her little yellow convertible to a new home. When we got there, a little boy popped out of the bushes and yelled, ‘I finally have a brother!’ When I became a Murphy, because of Mary Anne Brown, I knew I was home, and when my siblings joined me, I knew I had a family.”
Many years later, Peter was hired by Mary Anne and has been with Hephzibah for 30 years. “I try my best every day to mirror Mary Anne. There are a million things that I will cherish about her for the rest of my life,” he said.
During Brown’s tenure, Hephzibah also started a Summer Reading Academy, in partnership with Dominican University, to boost children’s reading and literacy skills; a summer camp to bring together siblings who had been separated through the foster program; and Homework Helpers, a volunteer initiative to provide after-school tutoring for children at Hephzibah House.
“Mary Anne was ingenious, with bold ideas and a contagious energy. We collaborated on many projects over the years to the benefit of Hephzibah and Dominican. Mary Anne was a great partner – demanding, but also generous and playful, said Donna Carroll, former president of Dominican University.
Under her leadership, Hephzibah also pioneered the foster care of HIV+ babies and was one of the first organizations to champion adoptions by gay couples.
“My mom didn’t take no for an answer, especially when she knew that what she was asking for was right. She wasn’t judgmental or like ‘my way or the highway’ but she just willed things into action and you couldn’t help going along with her. She conquered things with love,” said Cuyler.
In 2002, Mary Anne was tapped to serve on a committee monitoring Maryville Academy, a center housing hundreds of juvenile wards of the state. The facility had been rocked by scandal following stories of abuse. The committee’s findings led the state to stop sending children to the academy. During the controversy, Max Brown remembers a conversation she had with Cardinal Francis George, with whom she shared a warm relationship, after Mass.
“She told him that sometimes a kick in the ass is a step in the right direction. He replied that, while he didn’t think he could use that in his homily, he certainly wouldn’t forget it,” Max said, laughing.
Often referred to as a cross between Vince Lombardi and Mother Teresa, Mary Anne Brown will be remembered by those who knew her for her tenacity, her inclusiveness, her boundless love and, perhaps most of all, her hearty laugh. She will live on in the thousands of broken children who she offered a safe harbor, took under her wing and, ultimately, encouraged to fly.
In addition to her husband Max and son Cuyler (Julie), Mary Anne is survived by her three beloved grandsons C.J., Harrison and Palmer; two sisters, Ina Broeman and Bonnie Carpenter (Jay); and three brothers, Dwight (Norma), Charles and Roland.
