It’s always difficult when a family loses one of its own, and the SF State track and field family lost one of its dearest members in mid-November.

“There’s always the conscious ‘I miss his presences,’ which is a couple times a week. But the subconscious ‘I miss him around’ is a couple times a day,” said head track and field coach Terry Burke about his friend and colleague, Dr. Charles “Doc” Harmon Brown.

“It’s the little subconscious ‘there’s something missing.’”

Brown died on Nov. 11 this year from cancer, surprising none of the SF State track and field family.

“He just loved doing this, and I just always figured that he was going to do it right up until he couldn’t do it and that’s effectively what he did. He was at the Olympic trials and no one knew he was going into cancer surgery the next week,” Burke said.

“He didn’t tell anyone,” Burke said. “That was the way he was going to do it and that was it.”
Brown coached throwers at SF State from the early 1990s until last season, when he first began battling the illness that claimed his life.

He was beloved by many of the athletes on the track team.

“In the short time I knew him he was probably one of the most generous people I knew and one of the wisest, too,” said senior thrower Sheila Cleland, who took first place in last weekend’s Husky Winter Preview in Seattle.

“He was always happy, I never saw him mad when he was coaching,” Cleland said.

“Any time we didn’t do well in a meet he knew exactly what to do to make us feel better,” Cleland said.

One of those affected by Brown was senior runner Andrea DeLaRosa. She said that Brown often spoke to her when she was feeling down and always made her feel better afterward.

“He was a big, big influence on all of us and to the program,” DeLaRosa said.

Cleland, who worked directly with Brown, had much to say about his role as a mentor. “He was really encouraging. He always thought I could do more than I thought. I remember him always saying that when I look in the mirror, he doesn’t want me to see a kitty cat. He wanted me to see a lion.”

Brown’s time as a member of SF State’s track family lasted through the administration of three head coaches before Burke came on staff and “was kind of the glue that kept this going,” according to Burke.

“His ability, as head coaches came and went, was as the person who remained and kept things from falling apart,” Burke said.

“And when I got the job he was the guy who knew where stuff was, what needed to be done, and what I needed to do, and, effectively, without him it’s been tough at times.”

Fighting such a grievous sickness, Brown never stopped living life as fully as he could.

“He was cross country skiing last year,” Burke said. “I don’t want to go cross country skiing—you get tired! It’s hard!”

Burke also told a story of Dr. Brown’s flamboyant dining preferences, “He also liked his steaks very rare, which I found troubling. They actually made him sign a waver once. At a conference meet, he asked for a rare steak at the Double Tree Hotel and the waitress said, ‘we can do that, but...’”

As essential as he was to the SF State track and field program, Dr. Brown’s legacy was already illustrious and accomplished before he arrived here.

Brown was a pioneer in the area of women’s sports, according to obituaries that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and on the Web site of Track and Field News.

At the time Dr. Brown started coaching track in 1962, women were rarely seen competing, but his research helped prove it was safe and beneficial for women to compete at all levels and even while pregnant, according to all three articles.

The L.A. Times article quotes USA Track and Field Chairman Bill Roe saying of Dr. Brown, “His contributions to our organization are immeasurable, and he is one of the people in our sport for whom the term ‘gentleman’ is an understatement.”

Brown was also the USA Track and Field representative for sports medicine to the International Association of Athletics Federations, traveling frequently to their offices in Monte Carlo in the South of France for meetings, conferences and other events.

Brown’s other accomplishments are too numerous to fully list here, but include helping found the medical center at Cal State Hayward (now Cal State East Bay), authoring many articles on sports medicine, research into all areas of sports and coaching at all levels from youth to international competitions.

Brown was surrounded by family in his San Mateo home in the afternoon of Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2008 when he died.

A memorial service will take place at Hillsdale United Methodist Church in San Mateo on Saturday, Dec. 13 at 1 p.m.

The entire track and field team will be attending this memorial, because “he very much shaped this program,” Burke said.