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Tampa activist Brown is living his mother's lessons
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Published: May 7, 2010
The baby boy came into the world under the worst of circumstances. The doctor who delivered him at South Florida Baptist Hospital in Plant City wanted to give him a second chance.
He knew just who to call: Mother Brown.
Of course, I'll take him, she told the physician. The baby needs a place to live.
She knew the drill. Annette Reed Brown, one of the community's first black entrepreneurs in a pre-civil rights era, had adopted five other children with husband Leroy, including two from a Korean orphanage. She had taken in countless foster children.
The baby's birth mother was just 14, raped by a church deacon.
Mother Brown was 55 years old.
None of that mattered. All she cared about was the tiny bundle handed to her on that April day in 1959. She knew right away what to call him.
"Moses," she declared, "because I pulled you out of the bulrushes."
A sickly child, he grew strong and resilient. Under her tutelage, Moses became an accomplished singer, a man devoted to his Christian faith, a chaplain to the sick and a champion for foster children. He's the founder of Feed Our Children, a Tampa-based ministry that provides food and assistance to needy families and senior citizens. He's a sought-after speaker in churches all over the world; his humanitarian outreach efforts extend to orphanages in Haiti and rural villages in Africa.
Moses Brown is uncomfortable when the attention is focused on him. He says anything he has accomplished can be credited to the no-nonsense woman who didn't hesitate to take in a newborn baby 51 years ago.
He is the man he is because of the lessons his mother taught him.
No one could have predicted the life ahead for Annette when she was born to Jim and Maggie Reed in 1904 in Plant City. It was a time when being black and female meant few opportunities.
Her Seventh-day Adventist parents gave their daughter a solid foundation. They sent her to the first black school in town, which was run by a church. They made sure she attended Bible study and learned the Scriptures.
The Reeds owned a restaurant and nightclub in the town's black business district on Laura Street. Legend has it that when Mama Reed collapsed and died at work, she was wearing a money belt stuffed with cash. Annette would use that to open a beauty parlor, keep the restaurant going and buy rental properties.
"She was the best cosmetologist in Plant City. All the colored women went to her shop," recalls adopted daughter Glenda Anderson, a nurse. Using a secret blend of bergamot orange oil and Vaseline, Annette created her own line of hair product. Her customers swore by it.
They also raved about her collard greens and fried okra, picked fresh from a garden she maintained in nearby Bealsville and served up at Annette's Kitchen cafe. Southern home cooking was her specialty, and people drove for miles to get a taste of it.
Annette wanted children, lots of them. She married a widower named Mr. Allen – no one remembers his first name – and took to his young son, Sylvester, as if he were her own. After Mr. Allen's premature death, she married Leroy Brown, a union that would last some five decades until he died in 1974.
But no babies came. Annette made it clear to her husband: If God doesn't see fit to let me have children of my own, I'll take in those who need a home. Leroy, who ran a custodial service, was an agreeable man, happy to serve his wife and the church.
Besides the six adopted kids, they took in more than 100 foster children over the years. She had a particular affinity for the hard-to-adopt youngsters, such as sibling groups, older kids and children with special needs. If they seemed unwanted, she wanted them. One of her proudest days was when the state recognized her with an award as one of Florida's best foster parents.
Her rules were simple and ironclad: Morning and evening devotions. Keep the Sabbath holy and work-free, which in their case, was Saturday. Hold your head up high and always look people straight in the eye. Press on and never give up. Learn how to play the piano.
"We never did understand how she taught them," says longtime friend Ethel Woodard, "because she didn't play a lick. But if they missed one note, she could hear it a mile away. "
Moses had a gift for music, both singing and playing, and his mother ensured he practiced for hours.
He got so good, he caught the attention of famed singer Little Richard while performing at a summer crusade in La Grange, Ga., 40 years ago. The two men, both Seventh-day Adventists, remain close friends, calling on each other for spiritual counsel.
He's produced two gospel CDs, "Second Chance" and "Favorite Hymns of the Church," sold through Chapel Records and at his concerts. He's working on a third. The profits – he's sold about 20,000 at $15 each over the years — support his ministry.
Just what his mother would have wanted.
She worked hard and expected her children to as well. When the rental properties needed lawn maintenance, she gathered her brood for cleanup duty. "Aw, Ma, why can't we get a tractor like everyone else? This takes too long," a young Moses whined.
She looked down at him with a steely gaze. "Boy, you got elbows. Now use them!"
But the taskmaster was also a softie. Annette always knew when her children needed a big bear hug or words of comfort. She dispensed both freely.
When, as a teenager, Moses learned the truth about his birth and adoption, he was angry, he says. His mother reminded him he had the love of two moms, "one to bring me into the world and another to raise me."
Although her businesses prospered, Annette believed in modest living. She shopped at Goodwill and washed her hair with Noxzema. Be thankful for what you have, she told her children, even if you don't think it's enough. God provides just what you need.
Her one personal extravagance was to purchase a new car every year. She kept an old clunker for driving into town so the whites wouldn't think she was uppity.
But she spared no expense when it came to God's work. She started Emmanuel Seventh-day Adventist in her home on Alabama Street. When it grew large enough for a sanctuary, she stood before the congregation and made a pledge: You come up with $10,000, and I'll donate the remaining $8,000. The members met her challenge.
"Wherever she went, she witnessed for the Lord," says Louise Magee, a retired teacher and lifelong friend. "If you came into her beauty parlor smelling like smoke or alcohol, you would get a lesson on Scriptures. She did it with a smile on her face so it wasn't offensive at all, but she got her message across."
When word got out that she was adopting a baby so late in life, none of her friends considered trying to talk her out of it.
"The Lord spoke, and Annette Brown listened," Magee says. "She wasn't just a Mother of the Year. She was a Mother of the Century."
Though she's been gone for 19 years, Moses Brown can't help but think of his mother every day. Her hand is on all he does.
As a chaplain at Tampa General Hospital, where he gives spiritual comfort to the sick and the dying. As a foster parent recruiter for Hillsborough Kids Inc. and Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services, telling Annette's story and giving his personal testimony in churches and at community functions. As the founder and director of Feed Our Children, a nonprofit ministry powered by volunteers and donations that serves local needy families, inner-city youth and the elderly, and sponsors four overseas orphanages.
"He's got the spirit of Dr. King and the punch of Mike Tyson," says Robert Daniels, a coach of the Tampa Junior Bulldogs of the All American Junior Football league. "He uses his life as an example of following the right path. He doesn't want to hear excuses."
Most of the Bulldogs live in the Nuccio Park area and come from single-parent or foster homes, Daniels says. If they didn't have the team, they might be on the streets causing trouble. Moses volunteers as the team's chaplain.
"More than ever, kids need strong role models these days. It's not like it was when I was growing up. Kids are getting killed and dying all the time. It's like Vietnam out there," the coach says.
Moses knew how to set wayward kids straight — he'd watched his mother do it. For 11 years, he was a motivational commentator on WTMP, 1150-AM, often borrowing from Annette's pearls of wisdom for his broadcasts. As a guest preacher in churches all over the world, he recalls the Scriptures he studied during her morning and evening devotionals. And when he performs in gospel concerts, he credits the groundwork laid from all those years of practice at the family piano.
"I hear her all the time: 'You can be somebody, you can make something of yourself,' " he says with a smile. "It's what I tell the kids who are feeling lost out there. Don't let the circumstances of the present determine your future."
Mother Brown made sure all her children got an education. Two became nurses. There's a chemist, a teacher and a drug counselor. It was her baby who followed a calling to serve the Lord, something that pleased her greatly.
Moses got his undergraduate and master's degrees in theology, and served for three years as an assistant chaplain in the Army.
He also married and had three children. He had to draw upon the strength of his faith when his first wife left him, and again when their 21-year-old son, David, died in a university hazing incident.
He's now married to Jeanette, an occupational therapist and musician. Before she died, his mother met her and gave her blessing: "She's the right woman for you."
In 1986, Moses founded Community Focus Ministries in Tampa. After seeing so much need and suffering in the College Hill and Ponce de Leon housing complexes, he redirected his efforts and focused on assisting families. In 1989, he renamed his outreach Feed Our Children.
Phil and Barbara Sealund of St. Petersburg are longtime supporters of the ministry. They first heard him in a radio interview years ago, then met him. Impressed, they donated money. He responded with a handwritten thank-you note and an accounting of how the money was spent.
"How can you not like that? He's the genuine article," Barbara Sealund says.
The couple now help sponsor the annual Feed Our Children Thanksgiving dinner at Nuccio Park, a holiday meal for about 700 kids. Employees from their online learning company help cook, serve and clean up. The Sealunds also provide scholarship money to kids Moses selects.
"You're not supposed to just talk about God's love. You're supposed to show it," Barbara says. "And we think Moses Brown lives the word every day by his actions."
Annette Reed Brown died from an abdominal ailment on April 11, 1991. She was 85.
A few days later, family and friends came out by the hundreds to say goodbye to Mother Brown, filling Emmanuel Seventh-day Adventist Church. One of the congregants pointed out that just a month earlier, despite her ill health, she had brought yet another convert to the Lord. That's what she did best.
Her baby, the son she rescued from the bulrushes, sang a beautiful rendition of "His Eye Is On the Sparrow."
She's buried next to Leroy on the black side of the Garden of Peace Cemetery in Plant City. Though her birth date is inscribed on the marker, no one ever filled in the date of her death. Moses thinks he knows why.
"Because she lives on in all the children she gave a second chance at life," he says.
He ought to know.
Michelle Bearden can be reached at (813) 259-7613.
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