His Mother, My Friend

It didn't take long for me to realize I'd met my match in the likes of Emily Campbell Brown.

Six years ago, before I married her son, we were dressing at her home for a black-tie event. After I'd wriggled into a floor-length gown, she scooted up next to me.

"Co-o-onnie," she said in the Southern lilt that always coaxed another syllable out of my name. "Would you like to borrow a necklace?"

Aw, how sweet. "Thank you, Emily," I said, "but I'm afraid that might draw attention to my chest."

"Hmm," she said, glancing at my neckline. "Isn't that what you're trying to do?"

I could hear her son chuckling in the next room.

"Emily," I said, kissing her powdered cheek. "You and I are going to do just fine."

Most of the obituaries for Emily, who died Monday at 88, identify her first and foremost as the mother of my husband, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown. They mention that she also raised two other successful sons and that she married a doctor.

She was proud of the men in her life, but to define Emily by her relationships is to diminish the giant force of a woman who made social justice the cornerstone of her life and of her family's. One of the first e-mails Sherrod ever sent to me was a story about his mother: She grew up and away from Georgia and its troubled ways and insisted that her boys always call African-American adults "Mr." or "Mrs." None of this first-name business, meant to telegraph who was — and who wasn't — worthy of full regard.

Emily's accomplishments wove through issues of racial and economic justice. When it came to making a difference, she did not wait for the invitation. During the 2004 presidential race, she organized a voter registration drive in a poorer section of Mansfield, Ohio. There was the meticulously dressed 84-year-old Emily, with a curve in her back and sensible shoes on her feet, dragging a card table out of the trunk of her car day after day. She registered more than 1,000 voters that year.

One recent morning, after weeks of being bedridden because of her illness, Emily asked for a hand mirror and was devastated by the face looking back at her.

I cupped her cheek with my hand. "Emily, you were always a beautiful woman, and you're beautiful now. That spirit of yours is shining through."

She scoffed, and I pushed. "Emily, you know I say exactly what I mean."

She rolled her eyes, acknowledging the occasional sparks that fired between us. "Yes," she said, "I know you do."

"If I say you look beautiful, it must be true."

She managed a small laugh. "Well, then, you're right. It has to be true."

In the last weeks of Emily's life, her energy came in short but astonishing bursts, and whoever was at her side leaned in with a hunger. One evening, we talked about Harper Lee's novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird."

"Oh, that was one of my favorite books," Emily said. "I read it over and over."

She was quiet for a moment. "I always loved the boy — the boy Jeremy. Remember that scene at the jail?"

His nickname was Jem, and his father, lawyer Atticus Finch, had planted himself next to the county jail to make sure a black man falsely accused of rape wasn't killed overnight by an angry gang of white men. Jem defied his father's orders and joined him. When Atticus insisted he go home, the boy refused.

"No, suh," Emily said slowly and softly, quoting Jem. "No, suh, I will not leave."

A week later, though, she did just that.

Hours after Emily died, I returned to work, as she would have wanted, and opened a large envelope from an anonymous reader. Inside, I found a profane poster plastered with my face next to one of the most pejorative words for my gender. I thought of our family's adage, that whenever we're challenged, we ask ourselves, What would Emily do?

I turned to my keyboard, revved up the computer, and heard Emily Campbell Brown's voice whisper in my ear: "No, suh, I will not leave."

And I started to write.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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