Music has been a continuous source of joy for San Diego attorney Barbara Fletcher Brown. While growing up in Port Chester, N.Y., she sang in her high school glee club, which performed so well that it was invited to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show.
She went on to the regional competition for the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, and when asked with whom she would like to sing a duet at the audition, she chose John Wilson Brown. They shared a love of music, Barbara as a vocalist and John as a trumpet player, that continued throughout their 61 years of marriage.
She began college intending to be part of the music industry, but decided to major in French and earned a bachelor’s degree from Saint
Joseph College in West Hartford, Conn. She took an exam to become a social worker and her first assignment in an inner-city project was intense.
“I didn’t know enough to be afraid,” she recalled. After she married John in 1959, she worked as a social worker for the state of Connecticut and as a French teacher for the public school system in Windsor, Conn. John completed law school at the University of Connecticut and began his legal practice in estate planning and trusts in Greenwich, Conn.
Their two daughters, Alison and Meredith, both inherited their parents’ love of music. By chance, when Alison was 8 years old, a babysitter taught her to play the guitar that Barbara had given to John as a Christmas present. Two years later they purchased a banjo for Alison, which led to her career as a banjo player, guitarist, composer and producer.
Music filled their home in Stamford, Conn., and Barbara was a stay-at-home mom until Meredith started the second grade. There had been three
women in John’s law school class, and he encouraged Barbara to return to school and become a lawyer. In her 30s, she applied to the University
of Connecticut School of Law — but as a backup also applied to two schools of social work. She was itted to the law school night program — a two hour drive each way.
In 1974, the family moved to La Jolla and Barbara completed her law degree from the University of San Diego and was itted to the State Bar of California in 1976. She was offered a position as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and became a federal prosecutor in the Criminal Trial and Appellate Divisions.
She was one of two women in the U.S. Attorney’s Office at that time. She recalls that after attaining a conviction in a jury
trial, a woman on the jury stayed behind to tell her, “I have to say, it was wonderful having a woman prosecutor. Women are so much more believable.”
She became a certified specialist in family law, was president of the Lawyers Club of San Diego and served on the boards of the State Bar
Committee on Federal Courts and numerous law-related organizations.
Her husband had become a member of the Rotary Club of La Jolla in 1974, and Barbara was a “Rotary Ann” in the years before women could be
. In 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Rotary clubs, as business establishments, could not exclude women from hip on
the basis of gender. That same year, Brown became was the first woman member of the Rotary Club of La Jolla. There are now about 300,000
women of Rotary, representing 23 percent of its hip worldwide.
In 1988, husband and wife combined their practices and formed the firm of Brown and Brown. Their daughter Meredith, a family law specialist who has sung with the Family Law Bar Dinner Band, ed the firm in 1991.
This year Barbara is serving as the president of the Rotary Club of La Jolla. (Her husband was president in 2000).
On Wednesday, June 12, their daughter Alison, a Grammy-winner and Banjo Hall of Fame member, will present a concert to benefit the Rotary Club of La Jolla at The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center in La Jolla. Concert proceeds will fund the local and international service projects of the Rotary Club of La Jolla.
Barbara’s leadership, professional accomplishments, and love of music have inspired a legacy. Alison’s daughter just graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she majored in songwriting and minored in musical theater performance — and the ensemble continues.
Ann Hill is an emeritus member of The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Community Advisory Board. She is an attorney, a consultant for nonprofit organizations and philanthropists, and a community volunteer.
