Joan Rice Brown

It is with profound sadness that the family of Joan Rice Brown announces her passing on October 12, 2021. A native of Anderson, South Carolina, Joan was an utterly unique, creative, passionate, gracious, and generous wife, mother, conservationist, gardener, advocate, and volunteer whose work on behalf of the state of Georgia made this part of the world a more beautiful place. As a child, Joan began working to help support her family by delivering newspapers for the same media company for which she would later work as a journalist, spokesmodel, and television host. At the age of 10, she and her younger brother Gary began performing with their parents, Herbert and Helen, as The Rice Family Gospel Singers, appearing first in local churches and eventually on radio and television at WAIM in Anderson, where listeners would send in postcards with requested hymns to be dedicated to their loved ones on the Sunday morning shows. After high school, Joan attended Anderson Junior College for two years while also working at WAIM as a copywriter, modeling for television and print ads, and producing, directing, and hosting a live 30-minute Saturday night dance show called Teen Dance Time. With the help of a scholarship provided by WAIM, Joan transferred to the University of Georgia in Athens, where she worked as the sales manager for WRFC radio, completed her degree in Journalism, and was inducted into the prestigious Theta Sigma Phi honorary society of women Journalists. After college, Joan moved to Atlanta, where she worked in group sales and special promotions for 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures, hosting local premieres for films such as The Longest Day, Mutiny on the Bounty, and Cleopatra. She also joined the Atlanta YWCA and founded the first local chapter of the Junior Business Girls’ League, an organization that provided a safe and supportive networking community for young businesswomen in the Atlanta area. Joan also served as a Board member for the Atlanta Girls Club and Hillside Cottages and was the youngest person ever to serve on the Board of Directors for the YWCA. In 1960, she married Robert “Bob” Brown, a deeply kind husband and father with whom she would spend the next 60 years building a family and giving back to her community. In 1963, Joan joined The Garden Club of Georgia and began to focus her considerable creative talents and energy on local volunteer work with an eye toward environmental conservation, accessibility, and beautification initiatives. A member of The Rose Garden Club for over 58 years, Joan served as President from 1977-78 and was an Emeritus Board Member of the Garden Club of Georgia, Inc., after serving on the state and national Boards. During her time with the Garden Club, Joan was a leader in local, district, and state-level initiatives. As Chair of Gardens/Gardening for the Disabled, she worked to produce the Christmas Gems cookbook, whose proceeds funded the creation of a film and teaching guide for horticultural therapy, a gazebo at the Georgia Academy for the Blind in Macon, the Birdberry Trail at Vargo State Park in Winder, and the restoration of the Meriwether Garden at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Rehabilitation Center. She also edited Horticultural Therapy: A Guide for All Seasons, which outlined the possibilities and practical therapeutic benefits of “playing in the dirt” for those with disabilities and different needs, as well as methods for the implementation of horticultural therapy in mental health facilities, schools, and prisons. In 1984, Joan worked to create a state-wide traveler’s guide for the mobility impaired, and in 1988, she chaired the creation of the Atlanta Parks and Public Land Enhancement Incentive program to fund and support beautification efforts. Building upon this work, Joan became a founding Board member of Park Pride, an organization that has helped invest millions of dollars for park improvements, supported over 250 park initiatives across the city, and worked to plant over 20 community gardens. She also served as a member of the Advisory Board for the Trust for Public Lands and spent six years on the Board of Trustees for the Southeastern Flower Show. Beginning in the late 1990s, Joan could frequently be found at the state Capitol with fellow Garden Club activist Rachel Fowler, protesting against outdoor advertisers and lobbying for legislation that protected roadside trees. For the better part of a decade, the two fought like hell against the deep pockets of the outdoor advertising industry. As one billboard lobbyist was quoted as saying, “They’re Steel Magnolias til you cross them. Then they become pit bulls.” In 1996, Joan’s contributions to the state were recognized in her appointment to the Court of the Gracious Ladies of Georgia, and in 2006, she received the Draper Lifetime Achievement Award from Georgia Conservation Voters for helping to protect Georgia’s air, land, and water. Equally at home working behind the scenes and in the spotlight, Joan was a truly gracious hostess who enjoyed gathering her family and friends together, gardening, reading, listening to music, and traveling. Whether kitchen testing recipes for the cookbooks or hand-measuring bathroom stalls in state parks to ensure wheelchair accessibility, Joan involved her family in her projects and instilled in her daughters and granddaughters a deep and abiding love for the environment and a sense of obligation and stewardship for the planet and its abundant gifts. Losing both parents in a span of 10 months has been unspeakably difficult, and the family wishes to express immense gratitude to Jeanette Nassourou and Fridah Mayira, who not only cared for Joan and Bob in the last few years of their lives with unfailing kindness, patience, humor, and compassion but also helped carry us to the other side of these profound losses. Our debt to them is immeasurable. We are also extremely grateful to the Rose Garden Club of Georgia, and to Deen Day Sanders, for the two scholarships that have been established in Joan’s name to honor the contributions she made and to continue her legacy of conservation work. And while we know that Joan would be mortified by how long it took to finish this obituary, it’s extremely difficult to summarize the life of a woman who was a true force of nature and who genuinely changed the world in which she lived. And it’s almost impossible to put her, and her work, into the past tense as both she, and her spirit, live on so fiercely in those she loved. Joan is preceded in death by her husband Bob (December 2020) and is survived by her brother, Gary Rice, her daughters, Amy Brown Sessions and Stacey Lynn Brown, and their daughters, Morgan and Sydney Sessions and Marley Matejka. A celebration of life will be held to honor her when the roses bloom again.