THETFORD CENTER — With so much on his plate already, heaven knows where and how Elmer Brown found the time, in 2008, to write a 48-page essay summing up his first 80 years and change.
The longtime nurseryman planted some hints in his brief memoir From Shank’s Mares to Quad Chairs itself. With a mix of humor and nostalgia, Brown recounts how, after moving to Thetford in 1967, he cultivated trees and flowering plants, nurtured a blended family, served his community in many volunteer roles, and maintained a zeal for barbershop-quartet music.
In the chapter entitled “Vocal Singing,” Brown, who died on May 3 at age 92, recalls co-founding the North Country Chordsmen in 1977. Describing a drive through the Northeast Kingdom in high foliage season, he reflects on how the colors of the leaves that day “made me compare a mediocre chorus with a top-rate chorus.
“A top-rate group sings chords because the people have sunshine focused on their very being,” Brown wrote. “Everything is done to perfection, and that radiates in their faces, which in turn clarifies the tone, depth of perception, and vividness of color. A so-so chorus can be entertaining, but lacks the effect of sunshine on foliage. I am fortunate in being able to hear chords in my head.”
Brown impressed then-new Thetford resident Joe Tofel before he heard the native of north Troy, Vt., sing a note in his deep bass voice.
“When we bought this property about 30 years ago, I wanted to line our driveway with maple trees and made some calls,” Tofel recalled in an interview. “The fellow who shows up is Elmer Brown. He was in his 60s then, and looked a lot younger. He was wearing a belt buckle with the acronym SEPBSQSA. I asked him what it stood for and he said, ‘the Society for the Encouragement and Preservation of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.’ When I said I enjoyed singing, too, he said, ‘In that case, first Tuesday you move in, you’re coming to rehearsal with me.’ ”
Tofel, a baritone and one of 18 of Brown’s recruits over the years, would sing with Brown in a couple of different quartets — most recently with tenor Brent Scudder and lead Frank Gould — for the next three decades.
“By the time of our annual show at the Lebanon Opera House in September, he was using a walker,” Tofel said. “It didn’t discourage him at all. Until the last month, he used to literally run with the thing. The last time we sang as a quartet, it might have been a rehearsal. I’m trying to think if we did a gig. I have a feeling we did.”
The gigs over the years ranged from weddings and funerals and Valentine’s Day workplace-surprise visits to the annual Opera House extravaganza and a 27-show run of The Music Man at Northern Stage.
In quartet mode, Brown had “a lot of favorites,” Tofel said. “I’m sure that My Wild Irish Rose and Bye, Bye Love were right up toward the top. I don’t think I ever started a song that he didn’t know.”
Kevin Brown, who now runs E.C. Brown Nursery on Route 113 in Thetford Center, is equally sure that his father never missed whatever events and activities he and his twin brother, Kirk, were involved in during their formative years.
“He was dedicated to the fire department, to the FAST squad, to his business and to the Chordsmen, but even when he was running around like a crazy man, he went to our ballgames, took us on Sunday trips,” Kevin Brown said last week. “He didn’t put anything off. I’m just the opposite — I put things off, put things off. He never did. And he never let anything get him down. It was always, ‘Well, we’re gonna get this done somehow.’ ”
So Donald Fifield Jr. learned during several summers working for Brown in the landscaping business in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
“We had a job in Norwich, installing an outdoor light,” said Fifield, who now lives in Lebanon. “There was a big rock in the way. Instead of moving the post for the lamp, he was bound and determined to put it where the customer wanted it. We just kept at it until we had the rock out of there. He would stick with something like that until the work was done.”
Brown applied the same principle to the Thetford youth skiing program. He joined it as a volunteer instructor of alpine skiing not long after moving to town, and took the helm in 1970, when it was under the umbrella of the Hanover-based Ford Sayre youth program.
He co-led the effort to conduct lessons at Dartmouth Skiway in Lyme, Ford Sayre’s home base and, putting his time and money where his mouth was, personally loaded the programs ski and snowboard equipment into his vehicle and driving it to the skiway for the next three-plus decades.
“After I resigned as head of the Thetford program,” Brown recalled in his memoir, “they presented me with a plaque and a large trophy. They were going to call it the Elmer C. Brown Memorial Trophy until just prior to inscribing it … someone reminded them that I was still alive.”
Brown’s knack for staying upright, and otherwise bouncing back from adversity, kicked in near the end of World War II. Just as he emerged from Marines boot camp, where he learned to box as well as to fight with weapons, the Japanese surrendered.
And after his first wife, Norwich native Marjorie Parker, died in 1962, leaving him with their two adopted sons, he married Marjorie’s best friend, Bertha Cook, in 1964. Three years later, he moved them all to Thetford Center, along with seven azalea bushes that formed the foundation of the nursery
“Never, never once did I hear my dad not support my mom,” Kevin Brown said of Bertha. “He never spoke back to my mom or not take her side.”
Emer also never indulged in strong drink.
“I get intoxicated enough swooping down Burke Mountain or singing Lida Rose with my barbershop quartet,” he wrote.
He also experienced more than his share of adrenaline rushes during his decades of service with the Thetford Volunteer Fire Department and the First Aid Squad of Thetford (FAST), the latter of which he was a charter member.
Among the several near-death experiences he recounted under the category “It’s Not Only Cats that Have Nine Lives” was a fire at the Patterson house in Pompanoosuc.
“I was standing at the ell of the building, playing fog into a first-floor room,” he wrote. “Suddenly I was bombarded with roof slates and chimney bricks, which dented my helmet and turn-out coat. I dove and hugged the building. It would have been fatal to step back.”
Between the recollections of Elmer Brown’s contributions and close calls by colleagues and family at his memorial service in May at the United Church of Thetford, the full chorus of North Country Chordsmen sang his praises.
The Chordsmen are still figuring out how to honor him at their annual concert at the Lebanon Opera House in September — the first-ever without Elmer.
“He started this organization,” Joe Tofel said. “He was one of the originals — the last of the originals. The chorus took it hard. There were a couple of quiet nights when he wasn’t there for our regular rehearsals.”
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.