Page 69: LYNDON MIDDAUGH BROWN
Helen and I spent much time during our youth in Florida. Actually, we preferred the other side of the Gulf Stream because there was less humidity in the Islands. However, when it came to retirement and permanent residence we decided to look around. We flew to West Palm Beach. There we hired a car and drove to Jupiter Island, Hobe Sound, and then across to the West Coast of Florida at Longboat Key, Sarasota. Then southward to Venice and Naples and back to the Atlantic Coast where we stayed at the Frontenac Hotel in Miami; up the coast to Delray and Pompano; back to Palm Beach.
At that point we decided we liked Delray best on the Atlantic coast and Naples best on the Gulf Coast. We felt that Naples was a unique community of residences with very little industry, many golf courses and it was accessible to the Ten Thousand Islands. It reminded us of the Palm Beach of 50 years ago with lovely restaurants and shops – and where on said “Good Morning” in passing stranger on the sidewalk.
The final inducement for Helen and me to choose Naples for living it out was because of Lyndon Brown and Leah, his wife. They had been permanent residents for 20 years.
[Note: Leah was wife of Robert Middaugh Brown, son of Lyndon. Lyndon’s wives were named Georgetta Gertrude Boyd and Ruth Marie Welsh.]
Lyndon Middaugh Brown, my half-brother, was 15 years older than me. As explained, Mother was a divorcee with a young son when she married Father. As a boy that 15-year differential in age was a wide one.
Page 70: While at Syracuse University Lyndon married Georgette Boyd, who died at the Castle during the influenza epidemic of 1918 in World War I. Their sons were Boyd Paterno Brown and Robert Middaugh Brown. After graduation he looked for a job while his true knack was mechanical tinkering with automobiles.
Two Ford Model T cars were dismantled and the best parts of each assembled into a reconstructed vehicle. A cigar-type body sans fenders was found. As a result, a two-seated sports car was now in being for me to have as my first car – thanks to Dad’s paying for it. I drove this car around the farm at Armonk as I was too young to have a driver’ license.
Attaining age 16 I crossed over into New Jersey to take a written test for qualifying for an operator’s license. This was because the New York State requirement had age 18 as minimal. In this Jersey exam one question was this:
“What would you do if you found a broken glass on the road?”
My detailed answer to this was long and convincing. I wrote as to how Carlo M. Paterno would get off the road, sweep up the glass, dig a hole and bury the glass fragments. When the examiner read this I passed! Now I was master of the sports car which Lyndon had put together for me.
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Subsequently Dad set up Lyndon, as stepson, with his own Ford Motor Agency in the elite suburb of Rye, New York.
Page 71: Through her Patriot Revolutionary War Ancestor, John Wolcott, Mother was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Consequently, both Lyndon and I were Sons of the American Revolution. Lyndon joined the Naples organization, but I did not follow through.
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After Lyndon’s first wife died in 1918, the two little boys were cared for by his sister-in-law, Mrs. Harriet [Boyd] Andrews, while Lyndon lived in our Castle for some time. When Boyd reached school age then he, too, came to live in the Castle but this was after Lyndon had remarried and moved out. Although seven years my junior, Boyd Brown and I were boon companions. Both of us attended Riverdale Country School.
Boyd joined Dad’s office staff in the early 1930’s. Following Dad’s passing, he and I had a brother-like togetherness as he was my good right hand in business, including the ubiquitously frustrating one of breeding and exhibiting pure-bred Aberdeen Angus cattle.
He stayed with the Paterno operation until its end and my leaving New York in 1970.
NEXT: CHAPTER IX • ANTHONY CAMPAGNA
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