Former Mayor Brown's Legacy

Making a lasting imprint on Beaumont’s legacy of giving 

During the hard times of the Great Depression, Orlie and Daisy Mae Brown lifted up the downtrodden.

Hobos riding the rails would stop off in Beaumont and head for their house, which was known as a place where the homeless and hungry could get a meal.

Orlie was a kindly gentleman with a booming laugh who often had a pot of chili cooking on the stove. Daisy Mae made sandwiches on homemade, fresh bread just out of the oven.

When a train whistle sounded in small-town Beaumont, Orlie and Daisy Mae had supper ready for those knocking on the door. The Browns welcomed those who trudged from the train to their home carrying “bindles” over their shoulders. (A bindle was stick tied at one end with a cloth or blanket for holding a hobo’s worldly possessions, just as we’ve seen those iconic black-and-white photographs from the 1930s). This was a time in Beaumont when men worked for 25 cents an hour and goods were bartered.

On holidays, the couple would invite people to dinner at their home at Beaumont Avenue and Tenth Street if they were alone or down on their luck. Orlie Brown would find work for those struggling to make ends meet and give haircuts to men who couldn’t afford a barber while looking for work.

“It was just who they were,” said their granddaughter, Donna Monroe, 56. “They were the type of people who reached out and helped others.”

 

Heading west

In 1925, the couple left St. Francis, Kansas, and started a new life in Beaumont. As a contractor, Orlie Brown built the United Presbyterian Church in Beaumont and went on to serve as mayor of his new hometown in 1941. Daisy Mae Brown loved to bake cherry pies and enter them in contests at the Cherry Festival. The couple had seven children.

Now, decades after their passing, Monroe still cherishes the kindness and compassion of her grandparents. At home, she proudly displays Orlie Brown’s old-fashioned desk, his colored pencil drawing of a hobo, and the Burpee Aristocrat Cooker for making chili. There are also pictures on the desk of her grandfather looking jaunty in his bow tie and her grandmother looking elegant in a fur coat around her shoulders.

A spirit of giving

Back in those days, the hobos left an “X” marked in a circle on the pepper tree outside the Browns house. It was a code that let the downtrodden know that this was a place where there would always be a meal waiting for anyone in need. Generations have passed since then, but the Browns compassionate nature left the kind of imprint that has been part of Beaumont’s legacy of giving for the past century.