Mary Brown Obituary

Mary Anne Brown, 80, of River Forest, IL passed away on May 11, 2025. Mary Anne was born in Cincinnati, OH to Ruth (Risdon) and Dwight Broeman on December 25, 1944. She attended Rosarian Academy in West Palm Beach, FL and upon graduation became a novice with the Dominican Sisters in Adrian, MI. She left the order to pursue her education at Clarke College in Dubuque, IA and graduate studies in Child Psychology at the University of Iowa. She met her future husband Max Douglas Brown in Iowa City, and they were married on July 14, 1973, in Port Huron, MI. Mary Anne and Max made their home in Oak Park, IL as Max continued his legal education. He would eventually serve as General Counsel of Rush University Medical Center for some 30 years. Their son Cuyler, now Senior Vice President for Huntington Bank, was born on August 17, 1973. After serving several years as Director of the South Austin Community Day Care in 1976 Mary Anne accepted the position of Executive Director of Hephzibah Home in Oak Park. She began a journey that would bring hope and healing to thousands of children and families in the area. She saw the pressing need for working mothers to have before and after school daycare and collaborated with the local school district to provide daycare at the various elementary school sites. This would be the first of many partnerships forged over the next four decades. With the Oak Park police she established a social service program for daycare families in crisis. This paved the way for the first community-based foster care program in Illinois. Although somewhat controversial at the time Hephzibah accepted HIV-positive babies in the foster care program. Over the next two decades Hephzibah opened the state's only diagnostic treatment program for severely abused and neglected children. It then established a residential program and an adoption program. It was one of the first agencies to facilitate adoption by homosexual couples. Thousands of children, families and working mothers have benefitted from Brown's loving, inclusive, non-judgmental approach to families in crisis. Many in the community consider her to be a secular saint. Brown retired from Hephzibah in 2017. Mary Anne is survived by her husband Max Brown and their son Cuyler (Julie) Brown, her three grandsons CJ, Harrison and Palmer, her sisters Ina Broeman and Bonnie (Jay) Carpenter and brothers Dwight (Norma) Broeman, Charles Broeman and Roland Broeman. Visitation will be held from 4-8 pm on Friday, May 16, 2025, at Salerno's Galewood Chapel, 1857 N. Harlem Ave, Chicago, IL 60707. A funeral Mass will be held at 10 am on Saturday, May 17, 2025, at St. Luke's Catholic Church, 7600 Lake Street, Riverside Forest, IL 60305.