Making a Difference – Part 4: Betty Brown

People who make a difference in our lives come in many shapes and sizes. Betty Brown was about 5’2” tall. She was about 45 or 50 when I first met her.

In 1976 my wife and I moved from our home in North Carolina to Chattanooga, Tennessee where I was preparing to complete the schooling which would lead to my ministry field. I had resigned my job with the Federal Reserve Bank in Charlotte and had taken a job during the summer as the groundskeeper for a Presbyterian Church in the area. On rainy days, there was inside maintenance work that I was able to do. As the fall was approaching I was aware that job was about to end, and I needed to secure another part time position during the school year.

The church had a fairly large campus and one of their ministries was a preschool and kindergarten. They also offered an after school program to assist parents with those special needs. I was 22 at the time. That is when I met Betty Brown. Mrs. Brown, as I called her, was the director of the preschool, kindergarten, etc. I would often strike up a conversation with her as I was working around the church campus.

There was a man a few years older than me named David who served as a teacher in the after school class and assisted in general in the summer with all classes. She spoke very highly of him all summer. As the fall approached, David announced he had secured a full time teaching job and would be leaving. Mrs. Brown stopped in the hallway one rainy day where I was refinishing some doors in the facility. The topic of David's resignation came up and she shared with me how concerned she was about replacing him. She talked about how talented he was and how the children all loved him. The conversation ended and she went to her office. I went back to my work.

I had been in prayer as I worked about my job need for the fall which would be upon us in a week or so. About 5 minutes after Mrs. Brown left me, it was as if I heard the voice of God, not literally however, say, “There is your job. Go get it.” I laid down my tools walked down the hallway and into her office.

My memory is a bit sketchy here about specific details but I do know that I asked her about the job. She asked me to give her a day or so to think about it. I was fine with that, and went back to my work. A day or so later, she approached me and offered me the job starting when the one I was on ended.

Thus began a growing experience for me. Why she was willing to take a chance with me I am not sure. But I will always be grateful. You see, Mrs. Brown was my first female boss. She has proven over the years to be one of the best supervisors I have ever had. She was fair. She expected you to work. She was supportive of her employees. She treated Kay and me like family. On more than one occasion we would house sit for her and her husband while they were out of town.

I was employed in that preschool until my wife became pregnant with our first daughter and I had to move to full time employment. I developed some relationships with kids and their parents that affect me still today in my memory.

I learned quite a bit from Mrs. Brown. She had a quiet way about her of helping this young aspiring minister to see the world through different eyes. There were many teachable moments between Mrs. Brown and me. Maybe it was partly that she was about the age of my mother, who had died a few months earlier, but she was able to get me to see things in a new light and evaluate things that needed evaluating. She helped begin the process of easing me out of my rigidity in many areas of life. But the thing she did that most impacted me was that she believed in me, when I am not really sure I had ever given her any real reason to do so.

Mrs. Brown is yet another person who made a difference in my life. She believed in me. She took a chance with me.

That leads me to two questions:

1. Who has believed in you in the past and made a difference? Perhaps, like me, this belief was unsupported, but it was still there and was instrumental in your life.
2. Who is in your life now, or who will come across your path that you should believe in? Where is your time to make a difference?