OUR COMMUNITY
The Doctor Is In! Detroit physician still works full-time, five days a week. DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER
A
journey of his lifetime took place in Detroit on Aug. 6. Dr. Richard Brown, who is celebrating 60 years as an inner-city physician, commemorated the milestone with his family on a bus tour of his lifelong personal, professional and Jewish journeys. The tour had members of three generations of Brown’s family take part, including his children and grandchildren. It was his wife, Kathleen Brown, who organized the bus tour with a driver, tour guide and all. “The idea was to see where I lived, how I grew up, where my children were born and lived, where I worked and the synagogues that I belonged to and went to as a kid,” Dr. Brown said. Brown grew up in Detroit, and after going to osteopathic college in Iowa, returned to Detroit and had training in the inner city starting in 1960. Sixty years later, Brown’s medical organization, Park Medical Centers, has multiple clinics in Detroit and surrounding areas. Most of them are in the city, with others in Livonia, Wixom, Canton, Roseville and the original building in
18
|
SEPTEMBER 2 • 2021
Lincoln Park. Brown has practiced at the same clinic in Detroit for 25 years. For Brown, showing his family real snapshots of his personal, professional and religious life as the tour bus traveled from location to location was a special treat. The trip served as a filling-in-theblanks exercise for many of his family members, who had only heard about his upbringing through words and photos. “It meant a lot that they were interested,” Brown said. “I think they appreciated it.” ON THE TOUR On the trip, Brown was given a flag of the city of Detroit by the tour guide. Brown asked his wife to take a picture of him holding up the flag and to send it to a friend of 25 years: Mike Duggan, mayor of Detroit. “We’re really good friends,” Brown said. “He ran the Detroit Medical Center, and we communicate frequently.” Then, the bus tour had an event planned by Kathleen, unbeknownst to Dr. Brown. “I said OK, I’ll send Mayor Duggan the picture, but little did he know this was the
surprise of the day,” Kathleen Brown said. “I then said to Richard, ‘You asked me to deliver the picture of you with the flag to Mike Duggan. I’ll do better than that, I’ll deliver you to him.’” The next stop was Brown’s office, where a car waiting for them contained Mayor Duggan, who then came out of the car to continued on page 20 Dr. Richad Brown displays the city of Detroit flag he was given,
COURTESY OF KATHLEEN BROWN
Dr. Brown and his wife, Kathleen, (center) surrounded by their children, grandchildren and other family members.
