Buster Brown: He could spin a tale and work garden miracles

Named for his father's favorite actor, Buster Keaton, Brown was raised on a verdant farm near Rock Springs where his family grew much of its own food.

In retirement, Brown revived his green thumb, growing fruits, flowers and vegetables in abundance to share with friends and neighbors.

"He had the most beautiful garden I've seen in a long time. Before you leave, he'd hand you some vegetables," Gene Arneson said of his visits to Brown's home in Tucson and cabin near Pinetop.

It was Brown's way with plants, his storytelling skills, a wry wit, generous hospitality and a technique for grilling flank steak over mesquite that friends and family members have reminisced about in recent weeks, since Brown's death from heart failure on Aug. 9. He was 90.

As a young man, Brown was a sailor in the Navy, stationed in Iceland before crossing the equator to sail the South Pacific during World War II. When he contracted tuberculosis in the late 1940s, Brown spent a year in an East Coast naval hospital before transferring to Tucson, where his cousins lived. At the local Veterans Administration hospital, Brown spent much of his time in a unit patients referred to as "the country club." A photo from Brown's days in the tuberculosis ward show the grinning, pajama-clad sailor crammed into a soap box derby racer named the "VA Country Club Special" that patients rode down the halls.

It was at the VA hospital that the tall, wavy-haired, gregarious sailor met his wife-to-be, Ann, a surgery nurse.

The night before Brown was scheduled for surgery to remove a portion of his lung, Ann visited with him and three other vets in their four-bed hospital room. Brown charmed her with his friendly, Southern-boy demeanor, the Arkansas drawl he retained throughout his life and his bawdy sense of humor.

The couple wed in 1957, and while Ann continued working at the VA, Brown drove to Sierra Vista each day to work as a civilian security guard at the Army fort. Eventually he took a job at what is now called the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), better known as Tucson's aircraft "boneyard." The boneyard was established after World War II as a storage facility for surplus aircraft.

Brown retired from civil service as chief of security at AMARG in the mid-1970s.

"He retired like you should retire — hunting and fishing, and they had a beautiful little cabin up on the Indian reservation in Pinetop," where they leased land from the White Mountain (Indians) until the late 1980s," said his cousin by marriage, Dick McCormick.

Sally Brown spent many hours at the couple's cabin. Though no relation, she met Ann Brown in the mid-1960s when both worked as nurses at the VA. Their shift usually ended at 11 p.m., and Sally sometimes followed Ann home for a late-night barbecue.

Buster would fire up the grill, and they would dine al fresco, enjoying the night sky.

"He would make us the most fabulous grilled steaks. He took the mesquite chips and . . . soaked them in water to get them to a point where they would be smoking under the steaks," Sally Brown said. "He was a master chef. It was so fabulous. We would spend many an evening in their backyard in the Arizona beauty with the moon up, and we thought we'd gone to heaven."

After Sally Brown took a job in Whiteriver, the trio would meet at Ann and Buster's cabin for cookouts.

"Buster was a fabulous storyteller," Sally Brown said. "He had such a wealth of information about the Southwest, archaeology, animals, everything. He was quite a character, and he always had a story."

It was at their cabin that Buster grew most of his vegetables, but at their home in Tucson, he was able to coax succulent citrus — lemons, grapefruit, oranges, tangelos — from the trees in his backyard, and colorful blooms — sweet peas, gladioluses, petunias, freesias, bells of Ireland, African daisies, California poppies — from the flower beds around his home.

"He provided flowers from his garden and fruit from his trees to everyone he could," McCormick said.

Neighbors Merrill and Phyllis Broad occasionally found vases of flowers on their doorstep, left by Brown.

"He had the most beautiful, perfect yard," Merrill Broad said. "He had beautiful flowers and trees. Beautiful. He had the best lemons, Meyer lemons. It was a miracle. He was a green-thumb man. He used to work at it every day. Lots of time, lots of energy every day. That was his secret."

From an early age, Cindy Wood was a frequent beneficiary of Brown's green thumb. Her family moved in next door when she was 2 years old, and she spent much of her time with the couple.

"They were almost like parents to me," Wood said. "They had very pampered dogs, but they didn't have kids. I had kind of a rough childhood, so they were stability for me.

"I kind of lived over at their house. They were good people. For a while, I thought he was the Buster Brown, and that was kind of fun. They'd be barbecuing, and they'd put extra food on for me. Their door was always open, and I knew it."

Wood gained much of her gardening expertise from Buster and was influenced to become a nurse based on Ann's career. Her family moved out of the neighborhood when Wood was a teen, but she stayed in close contact with the couple.

"He was a one-of-a-kind kind of guy, very gentle and very caring. He was like a life mentor for me," Wood said. "He was a big man with just a huge heart. The kind of guy we need more of. He would do anything for you. He was very generous."

the series

This feature chronicles the lives of recently deceased Tucsonans. Some were well-known across the community. Others had an impact on a smaller sphere of friends, family members and acquaintances. Many of these people led interesting — and sometimes extraordinary — lives with little or no fanfare. Now you'll hear their stories.

On StarNet

Did you know Buster Brown? Add your remembrance to this article online at azstarnet.com/ lifestories