Remembering Tommie Brown

Age 82, Gary, Ind.
Passed away on April 9, 2020

It was love at first sight for Tommie Brown, who was 20 when he first saw Doris Nunn, then 18, sitting on a schoolyard railing. Always a charmer, Brown pursued his future wife with gusto — using the little Spanish he knew to win her over.

They married in 1958 and planted roots in Gary, Ind., leaning on each other as the world around them changed. In 1964, with the civil rights movement underway, the Browns bought their first house in a community that had opened up for black families. The couple became a staple of their tightknit neighborhood, and they would live in their green, two-story home for the rest of their lives.

The secret behind Tommie and Doris Brown’s near-62-year marriage may have been its simplicity. Their wedding ceremony featured fewer than 10 people. Anniversaries were celebrated with nothing more than cards and flowers. Relatives say their union was marked by a solemn vow: They would always be with each other, no matter what.

“It was like peanut butter and jelly, their complementary aspects,” said Forrest Daniels, a cousin to the Brown family. “It was always the two of them, I don’t know how else to explain it.”

The couple became even more inseparable when Tommie Brown retired from working security at a steel mill in 1991. From then on, all shopping trips, chores and doctor’s visits were completed together. Doris Brown remained her husband’s caregiver even as he developed Alzheimer’s disease, and they were determined to make their support last. AD

Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.

But on April 9, the inseparable duo spent their final hours battling complications from covid-19 in hospitals 12 miles apart — their cases highlighting the disproportionate ways in which the coronavirus has affected the African American community and older people.

Doris Brown, 79, died that morning. Tommie Brown, 82, died less than 12 hours later.

“They made a pact with each other that they wouldn’t put each other in a nursing home — that they would take care of each other till the very end,” said their son, Duwayne Brown. “For them to go together was more like they would’ve wanted, and they were able to do it.”

Doris Brown questioned whether she could keep up the pact and continue caring for her husband after he was hospitalized over complications from diabetes March 25. She appeared physically ill to their son, but she told him she was simply tired from taking care of her husband and reluctant to seek help. A wellness check on March 28 left no doubt about it: Doris Brown needed to go to the hospital, too.

She was initially diagnosed with pneumonia at Methodist Hospitals Southlake Campus in Merrillville, Ind., but a covid-19 test also came up positive, and she was placed on a ventilator the next day. Restrictions at the hospital meant Duwayne Brown could view his mother only through a window.

When her left lung collapsed April 7, “they said there wasn’t anything else they could do, beyond keeping her on comfort care to give us time to notify family,” recalled Duwayne Brown, who is 60. AD

Tommie Brown, who’d also tested positive for the coronavirus at Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus in Gary, appeared to have recovered. But obstacles surrounding his potential release — namely, where he would live with his wife intubated — meant a prolonged hospital stay.

Duwayne Brown decided it was time to remove his mother from the ventilator on April 8. She continued to breathe, even without assistance. When his phone rang at 1:30 the next morning, he was expecting to hear his mother had passed away; but a physician at Northlake had other news: His father’s heart had stopped momentarily, and doctors had got it beating again. Tommie Brown was now resting in the intensive care unit.

More stories

Faces of the dead

This is how they lived — and what was lost when they died. Read now

The son rushed to the hospital to see his father, who was on a ventilator but not sedated. To soothe him, Duwayne Brown whispered in his ear. AD

“I told him that my mother was getting ready to leave us, and it’s okay for him to go, too — they would go on that journey together,” Brown said. “Once he heard my voice, you could see him calm down, and all his vitals stabilized.”

Doris Brown died at 10:20 a.m. that day. Tommie Brown died at 9 p.m.

The family’s inability to hold a funeral and repast has made it even more difficult for those who knew the Browns to cope with their deaths. Tommie and Doris Brown were typically the ones in charge of organizing family gatherings in Gary, their cousin, Daniels, recalled.

Duwayne Brown is holding onto his parents’ remains until he can arrange for a formal event to commemorate their lives. Whenever he feels the pain of losing both parents on the same day, he thinks about how they fulfilled their promise, even as they fought the virus in separate hospitals. AD

There would be no nursing homes or loneliness, just as they had vowed.

“They were just connected like that,” he said. “To all of us, it was amazing, surreal and spiritual that they would both succumb like that on the same day.”

Say something about Tommie...