Downtown business owners try to keep smiling amid pandemic - 1736 Magazine, Summer 2020

Three houses on Metcalf Street in Augusta’s Harrisburg neighborhood are among those built by revitalization organization Turn
Back the Block. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE]
CHANGE OF PLANS
Brown's first job as a newly minted college grad was
teaching for the Savannah-Chatham County Public
School System. State statistics show more than 40%
of Georgia public school teachers quit within the first
five years. Brown lasted three.
“It was insane,” Brown recalled. “I had 35 kids in a
class and no teacher’s aide. I was new and I think I just
got burned out. I give absolute kudos to teachers.”
One of her student's parents told her she should give
sales a try, which she did, with marketing advertising
for radio broadcaster Cumulus Media. She and
her husband, John-Clark Brown, a fellow Richmond
Academy grad and co-owner of Timberland Holdings
and Management Co., decided to move back to Augusta
in 2003 shortly after the birth of their son John T.,
now a senior at Aquinas High School.
Brown switched to pharmaceutical sales, marketing
new medications as second-line therapies to physicians
with patients not responding well to older generic
drugs. Though she built up a successful network,
health care industry changes forced drug companies to
increasingly pare back their workforce. After surviving
two rounds of corporate layoffs, Brown was let go
in 2017.
But the event was nowhere nearly as life-altering as
the birth of her second child, Frances, on Jan. 29, 2007.
Brown and her doctors knew something was wrong
immediately after delivery. The baby had malformed
feet and a reddish-purple discoloration from the neck
down.
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