Glen Brown speaks after winning the Jack Cramer Ideals of Athletic Competition Award July 28, 2017, at Donner Center.
The Republic file photo
For its more than half-century of existence, Glen Brown was Mr. Columbus East.
From playing on the first Olympians football team in the fall of 1972 until coaching the girls track team this spring, Brown was a constant presence at the school and as part of its athletics program.
Brown died Monday. He was 67.
“He’s touched the lives of too many people to even count over the years,” East football coach Eddie Vogel said. “He and his wife Sue Ellen are huge supporters of East athletics and East in general. It’s just a huge loss to the whole community when you lose a human being of that caliber. He gave his heart and soul to East High School for a number of years, and our Olympian athletic department has a huge hole because we lost one of the best ones that’s been around.”
Brown was in the first graduating class at East in 1974 and was the school’s first Judson Erne Mental Attitude Award winner. He competed in football, wrestling and track at East and at Hanover College, where he was an NAIA All-American in football in 1977.
After spending two years as a graduate assistant football coach at Ball State, Brown began his teaching career in the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. He has been an assistant football, wrestling and track coach and has been head girls track coach since 2006. He also was East’s assistant athletics director in 1997-98 and athletics director from 1998-2005.
Brown was the athletics director who hired Bob Gaddis as football coach. Gaddis would later replace Brown as athletics director in 2005, and Brown returned to serving as an assistant on Gaddis’ football staff.
“Glen was just a solid guy,” Gaddis said. “We had been friends for a long time, and he and his wife Sue Ellen were very active in our football program. They’re solid members of the community. He’s always been involved with East football. He’s about as ‘orange and brown’ as anybody I’ve ever met. He was an Olympian all the way down to the bone. He’ll be missed. He was always a guy you could rely on all the way around.”
Brown won the Jack Cramer Ideals of Athletic Competition Award in 2017.
“It was a total shock,” Brown said at the time. “I had no idea that I’d been nominated. It was a great honor. The Jack Cramer Award has been pretty special for the community of Columbus. I’ve seen a lot of my friends win it. I guess you secretly hope, but it wasn’t something like, ‘I have to do this so I can win something like that.’”
A past president of the Indiana Coaches of Girls Sports Association and Indiana Association of Track and Cross Country Coaches, Brown was an assistant coach for the Indiana Football Coaches Association North-South All-Star Classic in 1997 and 2018. He served in several roles on the East coaching staff, including head freshman coach for several years. He also kept stats for the varsity team for several years.
Longtime football assistant and current athletics director David Miller said Brown has meant so much to the school and community.
“The lives that he touched over his long career in Columbus is unbelievable,” Miller said. “The thing that stood out to me the most about coach Brown was the way he adapted his coaching style to the kids over the years. He had learned to kind of adapt how he coached almost every year with these kids. That was one of the things that amazed me.”
Visitation will be from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday and 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Barkes, Weaver & Glick Funeral Home. The funeral service will be at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Barkes, Weaver & Glick, and will be livestreamed at barkesweaverglick.com
A Glen Brown Student Athlete Memorial Scholarship has been set up through the Bartholomew Consolidated School Foundation.
