Deborah Ann Brown

Deborah Ann Brown

 Deb was born and raised in the Boston area to John & Dorothy Gessner on April 7, 1969, the third of four siblings. She married Chris Brown on September 5, 1999 and they raised four children of their own: Benjamin, Kira, Persephone, and Willow.

She was a girl from a working-class background: her parents and siblings never went to college. Her mother was a housewife and her father worked in metals fabrication. She put herself through Northeastern University in Business and then put herself through Columbia Business School graduating with an MBA in 1998. That enabled her to be a financial systems consultant for Fortune 100 companies, and she was especially proud to work for Finit Solutions over the past 10 years.

While doing that, she was also a stay-at-home mother of 4 children. Yes, you read that right: stay-at-home. She got them ready for school, took them to gymnastics practice, vaulting practice, skating practice, band, school plays, took them to doctor appointments, dentist appointments, made sure they took driving school, arranged vacations and trips to competitions: made sure they took advantage of every opportunity. And at the end there was always a home-cooked meal, a tidy house with a pool, and some dogs and cats and goats and chickens to take care of just to add that much more richness to their lives.

She was also a nationally recognized in-line speed skating champion. She’d been a skating champion in her teens and picked it up again in her 40s. From 2015 onward, she was multiple time indoor and outdoor national champion and national marathon champion. She was so proud of her athletic accomplishments, and it was something she was able to share with her son Benjamin.

That physical conditioning together with her unstoppable spirit enabled her to weather the late-stage cancer she’s been fighting these last 20 months or so. She resisted taking narcotic drugs for as long as she could. She resisted entering the hospice facility for as long as she could. She wanted to be up and doing, still achieving, still pursuing, still working. She didn’t want her mind foggy, and she didn’t want to lie in a hospice bed, waiting to pass. In the end, she spent less than 48 hours in hospice. That’s exactly what Deb wanted: to live her life until she absolutely couldn’t anymore.

In her life, and in how she faced the end of it, she taught us all how to finish a race.

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