Joseph Brown

Joseph Leroy “Roy” Brown, 79, passed away peacefully February 12, 2018 due to causes incident to age, in Layton, Utah.  He was born January 17, 1939 in Oakland, California to Joseph L. Brown and Elsie Cherrington Brown.  He married the love of his life, Dorothy LaVange on April 19, 1963 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and then traveled later that year to Utah to be sealed on October 1, 1963 in the Salt Lake Temple.  He is survived by his sweetheart Dorothy; his son Mark (Laura), Kaysville, Utah; his daughter Julie Brown Morra (Brian), Mountain Top, Pennsylvania; his son Peter (Trisha), Prosper, Texas; his son David (Eva), Bountiful, Utah, and twelve grandchildren whom he loved and adored.

Roy was descended from early converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who were baptized in England by Hyrum Smith and joined the pioneers that trekked across the United States to settle in Grantsville, Utah and Idaho. Roy was an only child.  His mother said they dealt in quality, not quantity.  The family moved from Oakland, California to Walnut Creek, California not long after he was born.  A train station now stands where the family home used to be.  For two years, Roy’s cousin Karen Prestwich came to live with them when her mother (Elsie’s sister) was unable to care for her. Roy and Karen became very close and Roy referred to her as his “almost sister.”  He spent many of his high school summers at the Prestwich’s swimming in the hot Sacramento sun.

In Walnut Creek, the Browns had chickens, rabbits, calves, turkeys, and a dog named “Jerry.”  They had a huge tent to keep the grain and gravel for the chickens.  They also kept pellets and used trimmed lettuce from the El Ray Market, where both his parents worked, for the rabbits.  They kept straw there for the animals too.

Every day Roy walked quite a distance to school, pausing to collect pollywogs in his lunchbox from the creek.  He would drop by the El Ray market on his way home for a donut that his mother made fresh.

In 1946 the Browns moved to Berkeley, California where Roy attended Willard Jr. High and then graduated from Berkeley High School in 1956.  He excelled in academics and took college courses while still in high school.  He loved swimming, dancing, listening to music, and tennis. He was known for rarely raising his voice.  Instead, he used music to express many of his feelings.  If wanted his family to hurry, he played Flight of the Bumblebee on the piano. If he was frustrated or upset, it was Rachmanioff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor. As his children were born, he wrote each of them a song and took great delight in teaching several of his grandchildren boogie-woogie riffs.

His maternal grandparents lived in Lafayette and C.C. (Charles Cherrington) taught him to play cribbage, a British card game.  He passed down how to play the game and his strategies to his children and grandchildren.  Family reunions always included a competitive and lively cribbage tournament. It was a day of celebration when someone was able to “skunk” Grampa.

Roy was attracted to numbers and his Grandfather Cherrington’s work as an accountant.   The University of Southern California, known for its excellent accounting program, offered him a scholarship and he enrolled, carrying a full load and taking additional classes at UCLA when USC capped the number of credit hours they would allow him to take per semester.  He graduated in 1960 Magna Cum Laude having completed several sections of the CPA professional exams during college.

He immediately signed up for post graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, but decided instead, to get his military obligation out of the way rather than waiting for the draft.  After signing up for the Army Reserve, he did his basic training at Fort Ord in Monterey.  He was then assigned to the Army Security Agency and sent to Fort Devens in Massachusetts to complete his training.

Once he was in Massachusetts, he would take his leaves in Boston, staying with a generous couple who opened their home to LDS servicemen.  One weekend he decided to attend a Saturday Night Dance at the local stake center.  He spotted a girl and asked her to dance.  She was a new convert to the church and attending nursing school at the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital.  He now had a new reason to come to Boston whenever he could.

When his Army service was completed, he returned to California and turned in papers to serve a full-time proselytizing mission.  He received a call to serve in the Scottish-Irish Mission and excitedly prepared getting the usual immunizations, clothing and papers in order.  Two weeks before he was to go into the Mission Home, he received orders to return to Fort Devens in Massachusetts.  His Army unit had been reactivated during the Berlin Crisis by President Kennedy.  Pres. David O. McKay sent him a letter honorably releasing him from his mission call and wished him safety in his military service.  If he had been in the Mission Home, he would have been exempted and on his way to Scotland.  It was a disappointing time for him, but the possibility of seeing that nursing student again lifted his spirits. He did see a lot of that nurse again, and when he wasn’t taking her out, he wrote her letters and drew Peanuts characters all over the envelopes.  All the girls in Dottie’s dorm would gather to see what he had drawn before she opened it.  It didn’t take him long to propose marriage.  They decided to be married during her senior year before graduation.  Since there was no LDS Temple on the east coast, Roy and Dottie were married by their Bishop April 19, 1963 following a fourteen-month engagement.  After Dottie’s graduation, they traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah in their 1963 blue Austin Healy Sprite, with Dottie holding an ice chest between her knees for over 2000 miles.  They were excited to finally be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple On October 1, 1963.

They stayed with Roy’s parents in Berkeley, California until they found an apartment in Oakland.  Roy went to work for Arthur Young having transferred from the Boston office and successfully completed his CPA exams.

Roy worked for Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Aetna before deciding to attend Harvard Business School to get his MBA.  Dottie got a chance to go back to New England for two years and be near her family again.

After graduation, he returned to Kaiser Aetna in California.  An extremely intelligent and proficient man with numbers, his ability to analyze data and see trends were key in his professional life.  Roy rose to Senior Vice President and Controller of World Savings and Loan.  He served in various leadership roles in multiple professional and governmental accounting organizations.  While he was with World Savings, he also taught part-time in the graduate program at San Francisco State University for over seventeen years.  During this time in his life, he suffered and recovered from three heart attacks and by-pass surgery.

Roy and Dottie sold their Lafayette home in California and after he retired in 2005, moved into a home that Roy designed in Centerville, Utah.  Not quite able to fully retire, Roy was hand-picked to contribute as an author and editor of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Codification Project which creates and monitors generally accepted (GAAP) national standards and practices for the accounting industry, even helping to advise congress.  The project lasted three years, and then he retired "for real".

He embraced retirement getting to know new neighbors, investing, watching sports, sleeping late, and gardening.  The local newspaper recognized him for the Best Garden in Centerville in 2009.

Roy was a faithful member of the church his whole life, serving in many different callings which included Young Men’s leadership, Elder’s Quorum President, and multiple financial positions at the Ward, Stake, and Regional levels.

Roy loved art, especially works by Norman Rockwell and Eyvind Earle.  He amassed quite a collection which he rotated on the walls of his Centerville home.  Before he died, he was trying to learn the banjo. All of his children learned to sing and play various instruments.  Nothing gave him more joy than to hear them perform and see them excel in their own lives.

Roy will be remembered by all who knew and loved him for his testimony and faithful church service, his deep love of family, his subtle, dry sense of humor, quiet acts of kindness, and wisdom.

Funeral services will be held Friday, February 16, 2018 at 11:00 a.m. at the Rolling Hills Ward, 2110 North Main Street, Centerville.  Friends may visit family Thursday from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Lindquist’s Layton Mortuary, 1867 No. Fairfield Road and Friday from 10:00 to 10:45 a.m. at the church.  Interment, Centerville City Cemetery, Centerville, Utah.