Benjamin F. Brown IV had a curious mind and a generous heart.
“He made a huge mark on a lot of people,” his wife, Clara Lovett, former president of Northern Arizona University, said Saturday.
Brown died Monday from complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The former Phoenix resident died in his home in Chevy Chase, Md. He was 81.
After Lovett left NAU in 2001, the two moved to Phoenix, where Brown became very active in ensuring the livelihood of several cultural organizations, including the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra and Actors Theatre of Phoenix.
“Ben was retired and had a lot of interests, including a very strong desire to help people who have less than we do,” Lovett said. And in Flagstaff, Brown chaired a United Way campaign that raised more than a million dollars, she added.
Brown was born in Temple, Texas, on June 24, 1930, the son of Benjamin F. Brown III and Mary Hunt Brown. He grew up in Waco, where he attended high school and graduated from Baylor University with a bachelor’s degree in English. He continued his studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, earning a master’s degree in Latin American studies.
While working for Bank of America in San Francisco, he enrolled in graduate history courses at the University of California-Berkeley and then transferred to Harvard University, where he earned a doctorate in modern European history. He studied in Italy on a Fulbright scholarship and wrote his dissertation on Sidney Sonnino, Italy’s foreign minister during World War I.
While teaching at Sonoma State University in California and later at the University of Kansas, he made what became a landmark archival discovery: Sonnino’s public papers. The statesman’s heirs thought these papers had been destroyed. The subsequent publication of the documents established Brown as an authority on the history of modern Italy. The American Historical Association awarded him the Howard R. Marraro Prize, and the Guggenheim Foundation awarded him a research fellowship.
Brown later moved to Washington, D.C., joining the Central Intelligence Agency, first as scholar-in-residence and then as senior political analyst. Lovett said he worked there for nearly 15 years, initially focusing on Southern Europe and later Latin America.
“He was very fluent in Italian, fairly proficient in French, Spanish and Portuguese and knew some Russian,” Lovett said.
Brown retired in 1993 when Lovett became president at NAU.
Local memorial services for Brown will be held at 11 a.m. Jan. 14 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 100 W. Roosevelt St., in Phoenix. Along with Lovett, he is survived by his brother and sister-in-law, J. Crozier and Rita Brown.
