Recently, the Midway community was hit with the unexpected passing of Brownie Rose. To many, Brownie was the local sports writer who made teenage, rural high school athletes feel like superstars when they would see their name in the paper. To some, he was “that guy in the wheelchair always at Midway ball games.” And while both of those may be true, there is a lot more to know about Brownie Rose. For that, we turn to Archie Edgemon to share more of the life & times of Brownie Rose.
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BROWNIE ROSE
When the celestial event generally known as “Mars Opposition” happened this year, I had my telescope aimed at the red planet celebrating the rare event. We soon had neighbors in the yard with us, and besides seeing Mars we also viewed the rings around Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter and its moons.
Seeing something like Saturn’s rings is a site you never forget, and never fails to be exciting each time it’s located in the sky. My neighbors echoed these sentiments with exclamations of “Wow! “Unbelievable!” My youngest neighbor even spelled out “O.M.G.!
Hobbies and passions like astronomy often start with a mentor. In this case, my mentor was Brownie Rose.
The night that Brownie introduced me to astronomy was the kind of evening experienced “South of the River,” that a lot of the rest of the world never sees because of light pollution. On that night, the mighty Green Wave football team had won another game, and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy appeared to be celebrating in the sky above us. Brownie and I were having a brief conversation about the game when he started looking skyward and pointing out the visible planets and a couple of constellations – I was immediately curious. He said he was going home to get out his telescope, and invited me to come take a look. He said, “show up about midnight.” I did and have been looking up at the sky ever since.
This exemplified the guy that I knew. Brownie Rose didn’t just look up at the sky, but learned what each point of light represented and then got himself a powerful telescope to peer deeper into the heavens. He wasn’t just a sports fan, but he wrote about it, and represented the community in the local newspaper (a local newspaper that didn’t always treat us like locals until Brownie came along). And he wasn’t just a fan of the Tennessee Vols, he was such a fan that other coaches took notice, in fact Sports Illustrated magazine told a story in the November 18, 1985 issue that started
Losing at halftime, the coach followed his team off the floor at Tennessee, where a young man in a wheelchair shouted abuse at him every year. He stomped toward the man, aching to grab him. Something stopped him;
“The Coach” in this story was Dale Brown of the LSU Tigers, and the “young man” was Brownie Rose. The SI story was quite frankly incomplete with some inaccurate assessments, but if you’ll indulge my nearly 40 year-old recollection of that event, I’ll give you “the rest of the story” as Brownie told it to me.
It is a story worthy of ESPN’s “30 for 30,” but I doubt they will ever know of it. The story is actually a series of events that started in the 1979-80 basketball season and culminated 3 seasons later. Here’s a summary of those events:
The best team in the SEC was the LSU Tigers. They led the SEC in scoring, field-goal percentage (in both offensive and defensive categories), and winning margin. Tennessee had a good team that featured some recruits left over from the Ray Mears era, a new coach named Don Devoe, and a super-fan in student Wesley Brown “Brownie” Rose.
Brownie would park his wheelchair at the end of the visiting team’s bench and lead the entire student section in a number of chants that demonstrated how irritated we were with opposing teams (and coaches) that appeared to challenge our Big Orange place in the universe. When the LSU Tigers came to town, “Sit Dale Sit” chants directed at Coach Dale Brown were heard more frequent than Rocky Top. There were other chants also, but we’ll leave those in the toolshed.
Brownie said that Coach Brown would stare at him with contempt “during the game.” So Brownie, seeing this as encouragement, laid it on heavier and heavier.
When the Tigers visited Stokely Athletics Center the next season, Coach Brown came onto the court with his team for warm-ups, and saw Brownie sitting in the same spot as the previous year, but this time instead of giving him the stare, he walked right up to him and asked, “why do you dislike me so much?”
Brownie provided him with a list of reasons why he was the focus of his personal disdain. I recall laughing to the point of tears as Brownie recited that list he provided Coach Brown. It apparently left the outspoken coach speechless, and he walked away.
Coach Brown later came back with his defense, which was “I’m not that bad of a guy!” and asked if Brownie would join him and the team for pre-game activities in the locker-room. The coach steered the wheelchair himself. At halftime of the game, Coach Brown didn’t ask but simply said “let’s go,” and Brownie was once again in the Tigers locker-room.
The next year, the same things happened (except the discussion on Coach Brown being a “bad guy”) and Brownie was taking part in LSU’s pregame and halftime strategy sessions, but this year Coach Brown offered Brownie a scholarship to come to LSU and essentially be a “graduate assistant” for the LSU basketball team.
I suspect there are many individuals that are aware of something regarding the life of Wesley Brown Rose about which others don’t know. There was a level of complexity within this man that exceeded that terrible car wreck that happened so many years ago. He exceeded his circumstance, positively affected the lives of others, and he did good things for his community.
– Archie Edgemon