VERMILION TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- In 1947, Don Brown ran into an old Army buddy who built ceilings.
While lunching with him, Brown glanced up and began to get an idea. The idea became Donn Corp., the world's biggest maker of drop ceilings.
Donald Aubrey Brown
1920-2010
Shirley Elizabeth (Green) Brown
1922-2010
Survivors: Two sons, Keith of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Ken of Gainesville, Fla.; six grandchildren; three great- grandchildren; and a brother of Donald's.
Memorial events: The only public one will be calling hours 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday at Dostal Funeral Services, 6245 Columbia Road, North Olmsted.
Investigators are analyzing Monday's airplane crash that claimed four people, including Brown, 89, and his wife, the former Shirley Green, 87.
Meanwhile, friends and family are recalling the long success stories of Donald, a tireless inventor and entrepreneur, and Shirley, a quiet, meticulous woman who helped organize his business and their personal lives.
"He was a very creative man, a classic entrepreneur, with a restless, curious mind," Bill Foote, head of USG Corp., the conglomerate turning out Donn products today in Westlake and elsewhere, said Wednesday.
"Don Brown was brilliant," said Mayor Jim Smith of Avon, where Brown owned property. Brown would stop by City Hall with photographs he'd shot around the country of oddities, such as ice-sculpture machines, and ask, "What do you think of this for Avon?"
Shirley Brown was a legal secretary in Cleveland and her native Detroit. She helped administer Donn in the early years and filled the shelves of a big family safe with tidy records of her husband's discharge, citizenship and more.
Donald Brown was born in Galt, Ontario, on Henry Ford's birthday and became the kind of person who valued the link. He moved to Detroit at 10 and went to high school there with Shirley.
Don graduated from the Lawrence Institute of Technology in 1943 and enlisted. He had his first date with Shirley on leave and married her in August, 1944.
Technical Sgt. Brown fought that winter in the Battle of the Bulge. He also developed a successful prototype of a new machine gun with less recoil.
After the war, he became an engineer at Ford Motor Co. and met its founder. In 1947, tinkering in his parents' garage, he invented a machine to make an aluminum ceiling grid, so workers could remove small panels and reach pipes, wires and ducts.
In 1948, Brown joined Midwest Acoustical Corp. and built a home in Bay Village. In 1952, he quit, took a second mortgage and started Donn, with two n's for flair and uniqueness. He earned many patents for ceiling suspension systems of steel and aluminum. He gradually branched out into access floors and wall partitions.
Brown was a colorful leader. For the holidays, he sent gifts to all workers' children. He personally picked about 10 varieties of gift for different genders and ages. Once a year, he paid his workers in stacks of dollar bills equal to their daily cost to the company in wages, benefits and taxes.
Brown had no use for books or reports. His managers phoned weekly updates into a recorder that cut them off after three minutes apiece.
When USG bought it in 1986, Donn was grossing more than $300 million per year, with 15 plants and nearly 3,000 employees in Canada, the United Kingdom, Malaysia and more. USG still runs Donn's old plant in Westlake with 183 workers.
The Browns built a huge lakefront home in Vermilion Township in 1992.
Brown installed a breakfast nook that rotated and rose three stories for varied views of the lake. He installed a roundtable in the garage so Shirley wouldn't have to back out her car.
He filled the basem*nt with some 20 workers developing his inventions. One creation was a blast shelter 80 feet long and 10 feet across. Brown funded a test through the U.S. Department of Defense. After some back and forth with township officials, he displayed one on land he owned across from his home.
Brown belonged to the Catawba Island Club and the Cleveland Yacht Club. He was also a licensed pilot.
The Browns' three boys became similar entrepreneurs and outdoorsmen. Their middle son Kevin became a top powerboat racer and died in a 1989 crash.
Keith Brown, the oldest, tries to turn around bankrupt businesses. Ken Brown, the youngest, owns Capra Goat Farm and Kenn Air in Gainesville, Fla.
Kenn Air pilots John Mengelson and Wesley Roemer were flying the Browns home from Gainesville Monday afternoon in a plane that crashed at Lorain County Regional Airport in Elyria, killing all four aboard. Investigators have found no apparent causes for the crash yet and said that they may need to keep studying it for up to a year.
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