MAYFLOWER — The Mayflower School District honored the late Joy Ann Brown, a former school board member, bus driver and longtime high school secretary, during a ceremony last week.
The high school was named the Joy Ann Brown Campus in memory of her and the contributions she made to the district.
Brown first served for five years on the Mayflower School Board, and in 1989, she was a tutor and bus driver for the district. In 1992, she became high school secretary, a position she held until she died in 2012.
“She was highly respected and was very efficient and did a great job,” Superintendent John Gray said.
Gray said Brown was one of the first employees to arrive at school each day, “and if I ever beat her, I felt proud,” he said. “She was a wonderful lady. She cared about everybody, and she ran that office really well.”
Gray said family members compiled a biography for the campus-naming ceremony. In it, a family member wrote that most people didn’t know that she would take out the student roll book each morning, place it on her desk and pray for the Mayflower High School students and faculty.
When asked about retirement, her family said she’d tell people she’d quit, “when the job stops being fun.”
Brown graduated from Plumerville High School in 1952 and married Jack Brown, also of Plumerville. They moved to Mayflower in 1959.
They had four sons, Terry, Jeff, Tracy and the late Steve, all of Mayflower; nine grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
In the mid-’60s, she worked as a clerk for Jim and Ann Harris in their grocery business, now Linda’s Grocery.
The Browns owned farmland in the Lollie Bottoms and farmed until 1992. She drove tractors and trucks, worked cattle, was the bookkeeper and did whatever was needed in the farm’s day-to-day operations, her family wrote in the biography.
Known as Meme to her family and many students, she was a member of First Baptist Church of Mayflower, where she served in many capacities.
Brown also served as township committeewoman for Benedict township and worked the election polls for more than 35 years, serving in many positions.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline com.