Funeral Celebrates Life Of Ron Brown ‘For This Man Loved Life And All The Things In It’
A week of mourning that consumed much of official Washington and saw Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown become a national symbol of personal achievement and racial bridge-building came to a close Wednesday with a memorial service in which sorrow gave way to ebullient memories of Brown’s life.
The pews at the Washington National Cathedral were filled with some 4,700 mourners, a group that included hundreds of the country’s most powerful figures in politics, business and entertainment, along with more than a thousand others who didn’t know Brown but got in line at dawn for the chance to honor him.
“The Bible tells us, ‘though we weep through the night, joy will come in the morning,’ ” said President Clinton, who gave the eulogy. “Ron Brown’s incredible life force brought us all joy in the morning. No dark night could ever defeat him. And as we remember him, may we always be able to recover his joy. For this man loved life and all the things in it.”
Afterward, the funeral procession drove a wandering route through Washington, past the grand embassies on Massachusetts Avenue and though the downtrodden Shaw neighborhood, in what was intended to be a symbolic retracing of Brown’s rise from modest roots. Then the cavalcade crossed the Potomac for a military burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
It was a week to the day after Brown and 34 others perished when their Air Force transport crashed into a Croatian mountainside in a blinding storm. At the cathedral Wednesday, the sun kept pushing through the clouds - both outside the majestic building and in.
Brown’s son Michael noted puckishly that few of the people who have spoken in the past week of his father’s grace under pressure could have been familiar with his erratic putting on the golf course. Clinton recalled how he and Brown found themselves on opposite sides of a pickup basketball game with teenagers in Los Angeles and “all of a sudden he forgot who was president and how he got his day job.”
There were solemn moments, too. White House aide Alexis Herman, a longtime friend of Brown’s, read from the Book of Matthew - “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” - in a strong, resonant voice, then broke down as she walked away from the altar.
Fittingly for a man who in life was known for ambition and achievement, the service drew a remarkable constellation of achievers from all quarters of American life.
Who was there? The quick answer is everyone.
Official Washington, naturally, turned out in force, turning the congregation into an almanac of the politically powerful. On one pew: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., on whose presidential campaign Brown once worked, seated beside retired Gen. Colin Powell, who shared with Brown an ability to command respect on both sides of the country’s racial divide. But Brown’s sudden loss has resonated beyond the political capital, into the worlds of entertainment and business. Singer Stevie Wonder, wearing a rhinestone jacket, was there, as was star defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran. Black Entertainment Television chief executive Robert T. Johnson gave a reading, and so did Eastman Kodak chief executive George Fisher. Musician Wynton Marsalis performed a piercing, mournful trumpet solo.
It wasn’t just the mighty filling the rows. More than a thousand people, black and white, young and old, lined up outside the National Cathedral early Wednesday morning to get public tickets to the funeral service. They stood shivering in the cold wind, hoping for a chance to say farewell to a person known to them only through reputation.
That reputation, of course, has transformed in the days since Brown’s death, as the trajectory of his life - from middle-class kid growing up in Harlem to savvy, globe-trotting cabinet secretary - received such broad public notice.