#58 John William Brown

John William Brown

Born: December 28, 1913
Died: October 29, 1993
Political Party: Republican
Term of Office: January 3, 1957-January 14, 1957
Buried: Spring Grove Cemetery Medina, Ohio
No.33 of 58

   Brown was born in Athens, Ohio and graduated from Lancaster High School. As a young adult he pursued a number of business options as well as serving in the Ohio Highway Patrol. When WW2 broke out he joined the Coast Guard. After the war he moved back to his home in Medina, Ohio. 

   He entered politics in 1950 when he was elected to be Mayor of Medina. In 1952 he ran for Lt. Governor of Ohio, and won. Back then the elections for Governor and Lt. Governor were separate. It wasn't until 1978 that Ohio would have each party pick a party ticket in which Governor and Lt. Governor would run together.

     In 1956, John William Brown pursued the Republican nomination for Governor of Ohio, but he lost the nomination to C. William O'Neill. O'Neill would go on to win in the General Election. Meanwhile, outgoing Democratic Governor Frank Lausche had won a seat in the U.S. Senate on the same day that O'Neill won the Governorship. Lausche had to resign 11 days early to be sworn in for his new job as a U.S. Senator on January 3, 1957. Governor -elect C. William O'Neill was not set to be sworn in as Ohio's Governor until January 14, 1957. And so John William Brown became the Governor of Ohio for 11 days to fill the gap from Lausche's resignation to O'Neill's inauguration. This same situation would happen again in 1999 when Lt. Governor Nancy Hollister became Governor for 11 days in between the terms of George Voinovich and Bob Taft. And so Brown is tied with Hollister as being the Governors with the shortest terms in office.

     Governor Brown took his 11 day administration very seriously. He moved into the Governors mansion, demanded Governors salary pay for 11 days and summoned the General Assembly to hear his state of the state address. He worked so hard in his short term in office that by the end he had 5 boxes of Governors papers to give to the Ohio Historical Society for historical record. After his time as Governor he was elected to both the Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio Senate. In 1962, he was again elected Lt. Governor and served in that position from 1963 - 1975, before losing reelection to a 4th term. This made Brown the longest serving Lt. Governor in Ohio History. A bit ironic since he is also tied for having the shortest term as Governor. Later he became Commodore of the Ohio Naval Militia.  He died in 1993.

    In October 2016, I decided to go to a Trump rally in Cleveland at the last minute. My daughter Khloe, and my nephews Chris and Sam went along. I noticed that we would be going through Medina on the way, so I decided to look up the gravesite of Governor Brown. It was a pretty big cemetery and it took us a while of driving around before we found it. It is a nice, respectable, more modern marker. I really enjoyed looking up the unique story of how Brown came to be Governor.

    

My nephew Chris

My daughter Khloe and nephew Sam

Governor Brown and I