Dr. Hazel Christine “Chris” Brown went to be with her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ unexpectedly on March 2, 2017. Chris was born August 29, 1959 in Saiki, Japan to missionary parents Hazel “Roumel” Brown and Robert Brown. She was soon joined by a brother, Bob, and a sister, Evangeline “Vangie”, also born in Japan. The family returned to the states when Chris was four-years-old and not long after moved to Henderson, Nebraska where her parents served as house parents at Grace Children’s Home. After her father’s death in 1970, Chris’s mother moved the family to DeLand, FL to be near her brothers. She graduated from DeLand Senior High School in 1977, and University of Central Florida in 1982 with a degree in respiratory therapy, and then in 1988 with a pre-med degree. She attended medical school at University of South Florida in Tampa and graduated in 1992. She graduated in 1995 from the University of Cincinnati Family Medicine residency program and participated in the International Health Track. During this time she spent two externships in Kenya. Her passion was medical missions and she served short-term in many countries such as Honduras, Nicaragua, and Brazil, including time volunteering on a Mercy Ship. She served as a family practice doctor in Clewiston, FL before working locum tenens in many cities in Australia over the course of a year. In 2002 Chris moved to Saipan in the Northern Marianas Islands. Although far from home, she found a family among the people in her church and the colleagues with whom she worked. While she never married and had children of her own, she had a great many godchildren whom she loved dearly and invested much of herself in. Wherever she went, she added to her ever growing “family.” She returned to Florida in February of 2016 and was there with her mom until her death.

She is survived by her mother, Roumel Brown, aunts (by marriage) Connie (Galen) Morford and Vivian (Weldon) Morford, brother Bob Brown of California, sister Vangie (Craig) Henderson also of California, nephew Kevin Henderson, niece Sarah Henderson, several cousins, and many Saipan “family” members.

 

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