William Clifford Brown

June 24, 1935 - December 23, 2020

William “Bill” Clifford Brown also known as Icky, age 85, passed away on December 23, 2020 at the home of his devoted daughter and son-in-law Angela and Clarke Howard in Cape Coral, Florida. Bill was survived by his loving wife Shirley Brown. He was a member of North Shore Alliance Church in North Fort Myers, Florida. Bill was born on June 24, 1935 in Sikeston, Missouri to the late Sarah Malone & Clifford Elbert Brown. He attended school in Sikeston and graduated with the Class of 1953. He is also survived by two sons and daughter-in-laws Darren & Chrissy Brown of Lothian Maryland, and Christopher & Jen Brown of Bristow Virginia; six granddaughters Sarah Miner, Taylor Dodson, Caitlin Warpinski, Jordan Brown, Hayden Brown, and Kiera Brown; seven grandsons Justin Brown, Cody Brown, Tyler Crowder, Brady Crowder, Chase Crowder, Mason Crowder, and Asher Crowder; and two great granddaughters Quinn Morgan Dodson and Tatum Rose Brown. In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by his son, Michael Thomas “Mickey” Brown. Services will be held at North Shore Alliance Church on Saturday, January 2, 2021, 330 West Mariana Ave, North Fort Myers, FL 33903, 239-656-1553. The viewing will be at 10:00 a.m. and the funeral service will start at 11:00 a.m. All friends are welcome. Online condolences may be sent to https://www.fortmyersmemorial.com/obituaries/ In lieu of flowers, please feel free to make a contribution to either North Shore Alliance Church in North Fort Myers, FL (address above) or First Assembly of God Fort Myers, FL please designate the funds for Choir Offering. www.famfm.com Bill loved to watch the choir and go to the concerts. ~*~ Following is a brief autobiography William C. Brown left for us: When I tell people about all the things I have done in my life most people think I am the biggest liar in the world… My first job was running sales tickets from the auction ring to the office at an auction barn located at the west end of Sikeston Missouri. I was 8 or 9 years old and wouldn’t have gotten that job if it hadn’t been for my friend, David Bailey, whose uncle was part owner of the barn. I moved up to wrangler; bringing cattle and horses up from the outside corrals to the auction ring. Later they moved me up with the auctioneer where I wrote the sales tickets for the stock that was sold. This was a Saturday job only, so in between I worked as a carhop at Jacks “Y”, a famous BBQ drive in just south of town. I was 12 years old when I started there. It was called the “Y” because at each end of the town, north and south, the highways that ran through town and the alternative that ran around town would separate but then come back together at the “Y”. Because I spent so much time at the local swimming pool I became a lifeguard, probably the most enjoyable job of my life as a kid, because that was where all the action was. When I became 16, I went to work in the summer time for the Missouri State Highway Department as a rodman on a survey team. This was unusual because good summer jobs were hard to find in those days. But because my father had to deal with the highway department (The State needed to build roads on top of the levees that my father built) he talked to the right guy and got me the job. This was a summer job in during my high school years. I did this for 3 summers and got pretty good at surveying. After graduation I went to Southeast Missouri State College in Cape Girardeau, which is 35 miles north of Sikeston. I quit school after 2 years and my uncle, Jimmy Brown, got me a job on a riverboat. He was an executive for Simpson Oil Company who had several Tow Boats that ran oil up from New Orleans, to Wood River, Illinois on the Mississippi. I was doing all right there until it started to get cold. You do not want to work on a riverboat in the winter. I was then offered a job with Scott Insurance and Realty selling real estate. I was doing fair with that job and met my first wife, who was a senior in high school. After she graduated, her family moved to Gary, Indiana where her father worked for American Bridge who was building new smelting plants for U.S. Steel. When I started missing her, her father offered to get me a job with him in U.S. Steel if I wanted to come up there. Against my grandmother’s advice, I moved to Gary and began working in high construction for American Bridge in U.S. Steel. It was wintertime and I literally froze my butt off. This was in 1958 and I was 22. “Greetings from the President of the United States,” I was drafted, instructed to report to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I sold my car, the pride of my life, and reported as instructed. I met Elvis Presley there and we were shipped to Fort Hood, Texas. In between my first and second 8 weeks of training, we were given a furlough of one week so I flew to Gary and brought my girlfriend back to Sikeston where we then drove to Hernando, Mississippi and got married. My grandmother threatened to disinherit me for that but she never did. I then took my wife with me to Ft. Hood. During this time she got pregnant. Toward the end of the second 8 weeks, I was selected as the “Outstanding Trainee” from 10,000 troops for that training period. I gave my son Darren a stainless steel bracelet, which had that designation engraved on it. I was then chosen to go to Airborne School. Presley and our unit was scheduled to go to Germany, but if I went I wouldn’t see my child (Mickey) until he was 20 months old, so I volunteered for Airborne thinking that I would flunk out and be reassigned stateside. When I arrived at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of the 82nd Airborne, I found out that if you flunked out they would send you to Korea. That was definitely one place you didn’t want to go. Also, when I saw the losers that were flunking out I didn’t want to be associated with them so I stayed and graduated as a Paratrooper. While at Ft. Bragg, I went to two schools: Jungle Survival School in Panama and Snow Survival School in Alaska. When I came home from the service, David Bailey’s uncle, Bob McCord who owned the Auction Barn, offered me a job managing his country super market. Bob liked to go to St. Louis and Memphis and buy damaged products from railroad cars and he needed someone to take care of the store while he was away. I knew nothing about the retail business but tried it anyway. We had a lot of military surplus items in the store and we raised, slaughtered and sold fresh meat there. I was divorced shortly after this. My friend Lindy worked in Washington, DC for an ice cream company, and he and I had been talking about going to DC where I had been offered a job with the CIA. I never went to work for the CIA full time, but I did do several jobs for them. It gave me an inside look at what was going on in Langley in those days and it fed me good money which, with a growing family, came in handy. Intelligence work always fascinated me. I also worked for American Auto Insurance Agency, where I met my second wife. We married and had two children, Angela and Darren. Over the next 20 years, I took the Dale Carnegie course, worked in auto sales, had a company called Landall, Brown, and Weed, and was employed in commercial real estate with the Air Rights Corporation of Bethesda, Maryland. In the late ‘70s I formed Golden Petroleum Corporation, bad timing to be in the oil exploration business after the ‘70s energy crisis to the ‘80s oil glut. After the crash I started Maryland Resource Recovery Center, which was a tire recycling business with a car dealer partner. During this time I had a stage 4 squamous cell cancer (and no I never smoked) in 1987-88. I worked again in the commercial insurance business, and then in the Information Technology world for a while. During this time I remarried and had my last son Christopher. In 2013 I picked up and left Maryland for Florida to live closer to my daughter and to enjoy the retired life to get away from the cold northern winters and the fast paced life of the DC Metropolitan area. When I arrived at Angela and Clarke’s I was sick and required hospitalization for a week with double pneumonia. I soon recovered and spent a year renting a place in North Fort Myers. I was going to dances at the Shell Factory, and this is where I met Miss. Shirley Uebel in 2014. We were married on March 28, 2015. Over those 5 years we spent a lot of our time dancing, playing bocce ball, karaoke nights, cruising, traveling, and going on Top Notch trips and dinners and the Winter Concert series at First Assembly of God. During these last years I wrote and published, His Last Mission in 2017, which was inspired by actual events and true stories from my childhood growing up in a small town. In 2020 I published The Legend of Dale Cassaway where I researched the Border War that took place before, during and after the Civil War. It is a historical romance novel. My assets aren’t much, but what I do have is a close relationship with the Lord. Jesus Christ never owned anything. And Paul had nothing. But look where they are today. So THINGS are not always what we make of them. It’s our relationship with God and our loved ones that are most important. So let me close by saying, I am so blessed having had 4 children. If I had my way I would have a big ranch and have all of you living and working with me. But that was not God’s plan. I just want you to know that I love each of you so deeply. And I am so proud of you. My request to you is that if you do not know the Lord, that you begin your search for Jesus our Lord, because when you come to know him in an intimate way, life will start to make sense and you will find a peace you cannot find anywhere else. It’s not things my children, it’s your relationship with God and people that matters. We can be together again kids. This is God’s promise. This is not the end my loved ones, because in eternity there is no end. So my last request is that you promise…as my aunt made me promise, that you will be there. I’ll be waiting and looking for you, both God and me.