Brown reflects on his ‘Greatest Hits’

Date: 7/22/2016

WILBRAHAM – In nearly six and a half decades of articles and columns read by Western Massachusetts consumers, one thing has been abundantly clear – Garry Brown is a family man.

It’s a theme that remains prominent in “Garry Brown’s Greatest Hits: Columns & Stories from Sixty-Four Years in Journalism” a recently published anthology of his best work.

“My favorite column in here is the one about how I met my wife at AIC,” he told Reminder Publications.

Brown admits he never thought he’d be in the business of trying to sell books, especially now that he’s in his mid-80s and retired from The Republican – though still a regular columnist. The project of putting together “Greatest Hits” was one he had always seen as a personal one.

“Because I’m old and I wanted to make sure my grandchildren had something to remember me by,” he joked when asked about his motivation for the book. More seriously he added, “I never expected it to be anything more than something I would give to them, but after it was done, the publisher said, ‘Well, maybe some other people would want to read this too,’ so we’re putting it out on the market.”

The book most likely wouldn’t have been published if not for Richard Andersen, a Springfield College professor and author of the children’s book “A Home Run for Bunny,” which tells the story of the 1934 Springfield American Legion Post 21 baseball team that refused to play in a tournament in North Carolina when they learned African American teammate Bunny Taliaferro would not be allowed to play; it’s a story about which Brown himself has written many times.

It was Andersen who suggested compiling his columns and stories and directed him to Leveller’s Press, which Brown said did an “amazing job” putting the book together.

Brown’s wife Mary noted that he was always able to incorporate his children into his work – “He had the kind of job where the kids would go off with him having the time of their life.”

As in his career, his children were involved in the book. His son wrote the introduction, while another son and his daughter helped with the editing.

Even his father-in-law had a hand in the book as a subject of one of Brown’s columns on the 2004 Boston Red Sox, who won the World Series for the first time since 1918. His father-in-law came to America at 18 years old and watched Boston grab World Series victories before missing the 1918 championship while overseas due to World War 1. He didn’t worry at the time because he always thought he’d see another.

He never did.

Among Brown’s other collected writings are award-winners. The first chapter of the book is his striking reflection on his reflections on the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack, which he learned of while riding the train back from New York with his wife, who decided they should leave the city that morning after Brown covered a weekend series between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.

His 1983 column on Carl Yastrzemski’s retirement, which was included in the Sporting News’ “Best Sports Stories 1983,” is also among his honored works in the book.

“It’s not all sports. There are a lot about family and other stuff and there are some that are just observations on life like how to read a microwave manual when you have no idea,” he laughed.

Brown said he started compiling the book around the holidays and had his collection assembled by April. The hard part, he said, wasn’t in deciding what to put in, but rather in what he would have to leave out.

“A lot of the stories are about Springfield history,” he said, naming the appearance of many prominent figures who made appearances in the City of Homes before recounting the tale of his involvement in pushing the Basketball Hall of Fame to enshrine Senda Berenson, the “Mother of Women’s Basketball,” a cause in which he became involved after receiving letters from readers.

And, of course, his “Hitting to All Fields” column has a place. A mainstay in the daily for decades, Brown confessed the first column – it’s on page 94 – came to be out of a necessity to fill space and a case of writer’s block.

“I was working on the sports desk laying out the paper and I wanted to have a column and I said, ‘I don’t have anything to write about.’ I just decided to do something along that line,” he said, adding the original column was modeled after the column “Nobody asked me but…” by famed New York sports writer Jimmy Cannon.

“After all these years, sometimes I ask people, ‘Why do you still read this?’ You’d think they’d be tired of this by now,” Brown added with a chuckle. “It’s unbelievable people still like it after all these years.”

Brown’s book is currently available and can be purchased on Leveller’s Press’ website, www.levellerspress.com.

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