ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Friday, February 23, 1996              TAG: 9602230078
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: B-2  EDITION: METRO 
                                             TYPE: NEWS OBIT 
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP 

MEMORIAL TO CARRY ON AIDE'S WORK

Just as when she was living, Mary Juanita Brown still will be responsible for getting poor children the supplies their parents can't afford.

Fallon Park Elementary School, where she was a teacher's aide, has set up a fund in her memory to help those students. Brown, 63, died Monday of bacterial pneumonia she had been fighting since Christmas.

"If children didn't have pencils, she'd say, 'Here, let me give you a pencil, let me get you some paper,'" said her daughter, Deborah Jones, a teacher at Crystal Spring Elementary School.

Brown and her husband, Ernest, were known to generations of Roanokers as employees, then owners, of the Monsour Grocery at 902 Peach Road in Gainsboro. The Browns ran the store until urban renewal tore down surrounding homes. They closed it in the late 1970s.

They later built Brown's Grocery on Cove Road. With 11 employees, it was one of the biggest black-owned businesses in the city. It is now the Cove Market.

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