MAGISTRATE PHYLLIS BROWN: A 3 PART TRIBUTE
By Magistrate Catherine Woods, Retired Magistrate Richard Gilbert and Sally Gold future plans to travel internationally. We bemoaned our canceled trips during the pandemic and vowed to double or triple our efforts to book trips when the world reopened. I made Phyllis promise that she would not leave the courthouse until my youngest went off to college. I have forgiven her for leaving two months shy of his send off because she is a true friend. On behalf of all of the judges, magistrates, court clerks and court personnel, I wish Phyllis Winsome Brown all the best as she moves on to her next adventure in life. She will certainly be missed all around this courthouse.
Mag. Phyllis Brown- Colleague and Friend By Magistrate Catherine Woods It is with more than a touch of sadness that I write this article on the retirement of my friend and former colleague, Phyllis Brown. Before coming to the courthouse in June of 2015, I had, of course, appeared before then Master Brown in various family law matters over the years. I always found her to be a wise, straight-forward, and fair finder of fact. Throughout Magistrate Brown’s twenty-one year tenure at the courthouse, she was always highlyregarded by both the bench and the bar. She was/is very knowledgeable about the law; she understood the subtle nuances of domestic cases; and she went out of her way each day to help both self-represented litigants and counsel when the situation called for it. I enjoyed working each and every day with Phyllis. When I first arrived as a new magistrate, she made sure that I knew that she was always available if I had a question about an internal Court process, a dilemma with the procedural posture of a case or a thorny area of law. She was never too busy to listen when I had had a long full day of trial and needed to recount the highlights to ensure that I was comfortable with how I intended to decide the case. Most significantly, however, I will miss having my good friend, Phyllis, working in the office adjoining mine. Each day (or at least each week if we were very busy), we caught each other up on our personal lives, joked, and laughed. We share a love of travel and we talked incessantly about prior adventures and THE ADVOCATE
By Ret. Magistrate Richard Gilbert On April 2, 2021, Magistrate Phyllis W. Brown officially presided over her last docket as a Family Law Magistrate for the Circuit Court for Baltimore County. Phyllis Brown celebrated her birthday two days after her last day of hearing cases, having spent 21 years serving the Circuit Court and citizens of Baltimore County. Phyllis was born in Frederick, Maryland and was raised in Dickerson, Maryland in a country setting on her family’s gentleman’s farm. As a young child she was in charge of the dogs, cats, feeding the chickens, and gathering fresh eggs in the morning. She was a member of the 4H Club, as were her siblings. Phyllis attended St. Martin’s School for grades one through eight in Gaithersburg. Phyllis attended Holton Arms for High School and graduated in 1971. After graduating from high school, Phyllis attended Dickinson College and majored in English and history with a minor in economics and graduated Magna Cum Laude. In her junior year of college, she attended the University of Lancaster in England which provided her the opportunity to visit with members of her mother’s family and afforded her time to travel throughout parts of Europe.
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