{"id":48951,"date":"2022-01-23T16:34:11","date_gmt":"2022-01-23T21:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/?p=48951"},"modified":"2022-01-21T16:42:58","modified_gmt":"2022-01-21T21:42:58","slug":"mr-omar-wallace-brown-sth-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/mr-omar-wallace-brown-sth-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Omar Wallace Brown (STH ’16)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obituary coming soon…<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Below is an excerpt of Remembering Omar Brown by St. Paul’s School<\/a> where Mr. Brown taught Humanities. The full article can be found here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

During an employee Chapel service held to honor Brown following his death on Jan. 4 from a sudden illness, Rector Kathy Giles described him as someone who \u201cpursued wisdom and understanding in the context of being a robust intellectual of deep and abiding curiosity and faith.\u201d Recalling the many profound and wide-ranging conversations she and Brown had shared during his three years at SPS, she added, \u201cPerhaps so much of his good energy came, in part, from the ways he reconciled curiosity, intellect, and faith. These huge questions, the apparent and tragic flaws in our world, were not irresolvable conflicts for him. Rather, he seemed to me to be willing to regard what today seem truly like mysteries with an unblinking focus; an unwavering courage; and an open, questing, accepting heart.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Noting that Brown frequently spoke of his desire to work toward making SPS \u201cBeloved Community\u201d \u2014 a place where diversity of perspectives is honored, affirmed, and included \u2014 SPS Teacher of Physics and Astronomy Rick Pacelli observes, \u201cOmar\u2019s presence among us is a big reason why our community is as strong as it is. His influence seeped into so many aspects of community life here, perhaps more than any person I know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teacher of Ceramics Becky Soderberg \u201994 recalls Brown\u2019s influence in faculty meetings. \u201cOmar\u2019s words always meant something important was going to be said,\u201d she says. \u201cHe had a presence in the meeting, and you could tell everyone respected him and knew whatever he said would be coming from a place deeply rooted in love and faith. Omar made us all better people sharing his perspective and wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown grew up in a household of educators, administrators, and teachers in Kingston, Jamaica, raised alongside sisters Nicole and Janelle as the only son of Omar Brown senior and Claudette Crawford-Brown. After attending a Jesuit high school in Jamaica, Brown completed his B.A. in sociology and music at Amherst College in 2013 and his master\u2019s degree in theological studies at Boston University in 2016. It was at B.U. that SPS Humanities teacher and Chaplain Sam Lovett first met Brown, who was a year ahead of him in the divinity program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember Omar as a serious student who was also seriously lighthearted and caring,\u201d Lovett says. \u201cHe would ask me how I was doing, and I would answer with something about a course reading or assignment. He would ask the same question again: \u2018How are you doing?\u2019 It was a gentle invitation to go deeper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lovett says it was \u201chappy serendipity\u201d to reunite with Brown at SPS in 2020 as members of the same Humanities team and describes him as an amazing teacher who was well-loved by his students. \u201cHe had the ability to look beyond a syllabus, to read a room of students, and to care for them as people,\u201d he says. \u201cHis students remark lovingly how he\u2019d start classes with his signature, \u2018how are you?\u2019 and they knew he really wanted to know the answer. I learned so much from Omar about how to care for the whole person of a student. Omar was so supportive and loving and curious about everything and everyone around him.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his time at SPS, Brown taught Humanities V, a required class for Fifth Form students; Contemporary Black Literature; Religion, Race and Gender; Contemporary Ethics; and Economic Theory and Practice. After spending an afternoon photographing one of Brown\u2019s classes last fall, SPS photographer Michael Seamans fell into a wide-ranging conversation with Brown that touched on food, photography, Black literature, and more. \u201cHe was genuinely interested in knowing what I thought of his teaching and of his class,\u201d Seamans recalls. Brown\u2019s inquiry wasn\u2019t idle conversation; the two men had planned to sit down sometime during Winter Term to continue their discussion.<\/p>\n

Read the full article here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obituary coming soon… Below is an excerpt of Remembering Omar Brown by St. Paul’s School where Mr. Brown taught Humanities. The full article can be found here. During an employee Chapel service held to honor Brown following his death on Jan. 4 from a sudden illness, Rector Kathy Giles described him as someone who \u201cpursued […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13877,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[206],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13877"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48951"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48956,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48951\/revisions\/48956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}