Paul Cleveland Brown

CENTERVILLE — Paul C. Brown, of Centerville, died Sept. 13, 2008. He was born on Dec. 2, 1925, in Wakefield, the son of the late Robert Cropley Brown and Althine Cleveland Brown. He attended public schools in Wakefield, joined the Army Air Forces and served in World War II and the Korean War.

He is survived by his widow, Trudy (DeWolf) Brown and his two children, Dianne Brown Davis of Boylston and Dana A. Brown of Topsham, Maine, formerly of Los Angeles.

Paul was the oldest living selectman of Barnstable and the first non-native Cape Codder elected to the post.

He was an optimist who weathered many personal storms yet never gave in. His parents were both killed by a drunk driver two days before Christmas Eve in 1962. His first wife, the late Nancy Stoddard, asked him to take full custody of their two children shortly after his parents died. In 1991, he underwent life-threatening surgery and survived to regain full vitality.

While in the Army, he attended East Tennessee State Teachers College and attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. He also attended many assessors' classes and seminars at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and elsewhere; and attended UMass University Without Walls.

He worked in insurance, sales and merchandising businesses, including General Electric Riverworks Plant in Lynn, where he managed the Employees Store which he converted from a losing enterprise into the profitable store. It was there he met his wife Trudy who remembers that Paul sold her all the appliances for her mother's new home — "at a discount."

While he was a super salesman and merchandiser, Mr. Brown's first love was public service. He was elected to the planning board in Stoneham, where he led the town to accept its first comprehensive zoning bylaw.

When he and Trudy moved to Cape Cod in 1965 to start a new life with Dianne and Dana, Paul returned to active work as an insurance broker while Trudy went to work for General Housewares in Hyannis.

He was elected to the Barnstable Planning Board, and in 1973, was elected selectman-assessor of the town. Re-elected to a second three-year term in 1976, he served as chairman. Elected to the Town Charter Commission, he filed a minority report with the late Mary Ann Grafton Rodgers in opposition to the city council-manager form of government.

When he left office, he continued work in the insurance field and became one of the most respected real estate appraisers in Southeastern Massachusetts and a leading expert on Cape Cod's complicated zoning bylaws.

Paul was a 32nd Degree Mason and a Shriner, and a member of the DeWitt Clinton Lodge in Sandwich and Weary Travelers in Bourne. He was also a member of the American Legion, and a former member of the Lion's Club of Hyannis and many professional associations.

Visiting hours for family and friends will be held on Wednesday, Sept. 17, from 4 to 7 p.m., at the Doane, Beal & Ames Funeral Home, 160 W. Main St., Hyannis. A memorial service will be held at 7 p.m.

Interment will be at a future date in Wakefield next to his parents in a family plot.

Doane, Beal & Ames

508-775-0684