Margo Brown

Margo (she dropped the ‘t’) was born in Soest, Netherlands, in 1928. She died at 90 in the TRU in-patient hospice at Longmont Hospital, after a brief illness. The staff and volunteers were wonderful. Her end, like her life, was beautiful and brave.

Her parents were Jacob and Trijntje de Haan. She had an older sister and brother. One day, when she was twelve, she heard planes flying low over the roof of their house in Amsterdam. She and her brother climbed onto the roof and saw planes with swastikas on the wings. They knew then that the Germans had come. The little Dutch army had to surrender to the German war machine immediately after the port city of Rotterdam was bombed to bits. During the last year of the occupation, there was no fuel or food. Her family burned furniture and books to have heat, and ate sugar beets and tulip bulbs. She laughed at some of the ‘recipes’ they had for those, saying some of them weren’t too bad. Thousands of Dutch died in the winter of 1945, known as the Hunger Winter, but Margo’s family didn’t have it as bad as many others. Her mother was a nurse and was sometimes able to bring home food from the hospital. School kids learned to sing “Oh Canada” to welcome the Canadian troops who liberated the Netherlands. May 5, 1945 was one of the happiest days of her life. Always upbeat and with a sense of humor, she rarely talked about the hardships of the war until late in life. Even then, she could find things to laugh about because that was how she was.

Margo had just graduated high school and she and her adventurous sister were itching to see something new. As soon as the borders were open, they decided to go to Vienna. En route, they encountered a Dutch patrol that directed them and their one big suitcase back home because things still weren’t safe. They were driven to the train station with strict orders. There was an announcement that the train to Brussels was arriving and they immediately bought tickets! Margo had studied five languages with the hope of someday traveling, and she was on her way. During the rest of her life, she traveled all over the world, including many trips back to her beloved Holland.

At 19 she took a ship to America, started college while working, and became a CPA. She was a partner with her husband in the accounting firm of Floyd Brown Jr. & Co., which is still going strong in Independence, MO. She was the first woman CPA in Independence and loved helping her clients, even if tax season was a grind.

Her husband, Floyd, died in 1999 in Boulder, where they moved after retirement.

She leaves behind her two Missouri step-sons, Bob and Bill Brown, her daughter, Julien Pine, of Niwot, Colorado, many grandchildren and great grandchildren, friends and animals she treasured, and Dutch relatives recently discovered through Ancestry DNA.

Services will be held at a later time in the Netherlands, where Margo wanted some of her ashes interred. But she was always glad she took that boat to America because things turned out fine. Love and remembrance to this Dutch girl: Godspeed.