Dr. Howard Brown

Dr. Howard Brown was never a man who liked to stay still. He was so active that every person he interacted with remembers him in a unique way. Some knew him as a hero who fought in World War II. To others, Dr. Brown was a 50-year member of the Rotary Club or President of the Decatur Area Arts Council. Three U.S. presidents knew him as the man who sang “God Bless America” at their events. As an educator, he was known as a teacher, principal, adjunct professor, and superintendent (in Blue Mound and Macon County). But at Richland, he will forever be known as the college president who established stability. “I served on the first steering committee of the college to help establish a community college in this area,” he said in 1986. "That was very fascinating to me. As a matter of fact, the first time it was voted on, it failed just by a few votes. All of us who had worked on it were very disappointed with that failure. We thought it would have been a marvelous district.”

Eventually, Richland Community College (known then as the Community College of Decatur) came to fruition based on votes from the Decatur community. Dr. Brown was interested in becoming college president back then, but at the time, he was working as regional superintendent and enjoyed that job too much to make a change. But never say never – Dr. Brown officially became President of Richland Community College in 1985, right after he retired as superintendent. This move was a shock for his family. “He was 62. He was going to sail off to Florida,” his daughter-in-law Linda said. “But then this opportunity came up – Richland approached him to be the next president. He prayed a lot about it and decided he wanted to help because that’s the way he was.”

Immediately, he got to work. Dr. Brown had made multiple political connections in his time as superintendent of Macon County schools, and he planned to use them to finally move Richland to a permanent campus. With the help of legislators, Richland’s permanent campus became a piece of the “Build Illinois” program. It was created by then-Governor James Thompson to stimulate the state’s economy. The Richland project was one of the few in the program that has something to do with a community college, and it had enough funding – $15 million, to be exact – to build the whole campus all at once. In September 1988, the doors finally opened for classes at Richland’s new permanent site. Soon after that, Howard’s family convinced him that it was time to officially retire.