Janet Curry Brown

After a life filled with travel, culture, fun, and above all love, Janet Curry Brown passed away on June 1, 2023, at the age of 84.

Born in Saginaw and raised in Lansing, MI, Janet traveled the country and the world with her family as a military spouse, with her years spent living in Naples, Italy a highlight that she looked back on fondly for the rest of her life; she returned to Italy several times after, including a trip celebrating her and her husband Bruce’s 50^th wedding anniversary. She parlayed her curiosity and knowledge of other countries and cultures into other pursuits throughout her life, including serving as a tour guide in Washington, D.C., and with the Defense Intelligence Agency working with ambassadors and embassy staff from allied nations to host gatherings and cultivate goodwill. She inevitably charmed them to within an inch of their life.

In all her travels, though, she always considered Michigan home, and returned to Lansing in her final years. Her family cottage at Long Lake in the northern Lower Peninsula was forever her “happy place,” filled with the mementos of her life, many of them displayed in “the secret room” (hidden behind a bookcase and which she insisted be installed when the cottage was rebuilt in the 2000s because it made her laugh).

            As everyone who ever met her would agree, Janet was a character: gracious, fierce, elegant, and rarely seen without one of her omnipresent, ever-tasteful hats. She spent her early years training as an actress in repertory theater in mid-Michigan before enrolling in the renowned Drama program at Stephens College, and she never lost her sense of the theatrical. But she returned to Lansing to reunite with the love of her life Bruce, whom she married in 1958 and with whom she was together for 65 years before his passing earlier this year.

            She was, without hyperbole, an exceptional mother, supportive and caring and instilling in each of her four children a sense of confidence to find their own path in life. Forced by circumstances to spend periods raising them alone while Bruce served overseas during the Vietnam War, she rose to the challenge, including taking them on a cross-country rail trip from California to Michigan with a quick stop off at the Art Institute of Chicago; the prospect of ferrying four pre-teen children across the country by train (much less through an art museum) solo would be daunting to most of us even today.

            But she wasn’t just a “mother” to her children. Throughout her life, she accumulated new friends, many of whom looked to her as second mother, through her warmth and generosity. She wanted to know you, to know about you, and for you to know you were always welcome in her life. There is a family out there beyond her kin that will miss her greatly.

            Janet is survived by her children Elizabeth (Jeffrey) Weihl, Allan (Julia) Brown, Carroll (Kay) Brown, and Manning (Jennifer) Brown; her grandchildren Eva, Stefan, Erin, Jacy, Preston, Donovan, Connor and Austin and their spouses; and her great-grandchildren Lydia, Eric, Alexandra, Madelyn, Julius, Sonya,  and Isaac.

            There will be a graveside service at Felt Plains Cemetery (118-242 East Scofield Road, Leslie, Michigan) on Saturday, June 10, 2023 at 10 a.m.