Our dear friend, Al Brown, passed into the arms of his Savior on August 2, 2025.
Alfred T. Brown was born on December 10, 1930, in the Bronx, New York. His roots were Irish Catholic and if you ever noted Al’s distinctive accent and asked where he was from, he would say, with a twinkle in his eye, “the Bronx.” His father was a New York City policeman and his mother was a milliner. His older sisters were Adrienne and Joan, and his brother, Jack, was six years younger than Al.
At age 10, his family moved to Rye, New York, located on Long Island Sound. Al had fond memories of swimming out to a floating, wooden dock, anchored off shore, where all the boys his age hung out. His first job was in an old-fashioned, neighborhood grocery store where goods were displayed on ceiling-high shelves behind the counter. Customers would hand Al a list of the items they wanted to buy, and he would retrieve those groceries by climbing up and down a rolling ladder to reach the merchandise and place it in a box.
When he was 20, Al joined St. Joseph’s Abbey, a Trappist (Cistercian) monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts, as a Catholic brother. Al’s brother, Jack, eventually also joined as a monk. Al joined because he wanted an active, outdoor life participating in growing food for the monastery. He labored in the fields and dairy, and was restricted to a vegetarian diet (which he admitted later in life was not to his liking). St. Joseph’s was a silent order and Al learned the complex sign language that members used to communicate between themselves.
He was not there long before he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, a condition which he came to believe both he and his father had suffered from for a number of years. He spent two years in a sanatorium regaining his health.
Upon his return to the Abbey, he worked in the monastery’s Holy Rood Guild as a tailor sewing vestments and monastic garments. He rose daily at 2:00 a.m. for matins, and lived a simple life of devotion and work for 25 years. Al explained that the Abbey disbanded the order of brothers in the 1970s and, at that point, he opted not to stay.
Al met and married musician Shirley Myers in 1976. They moved to California’s high desert east of San Diego, and lived in the communities of Miller Valley and Pine Valley. There, Al worked as a roofer, a carpenter, a handyman and did fire-hazard reduction for local landowners. It is noted that when Al became a handyman, he had a ton of people, including widows, calling him to work for them.
In 1990, Al and Shirley moved to Hamilton, Montana, buying a log home on 20 acres on the west side of the valley. Al continued to pursue a varied line of work. He was employed sewing in a factory making goose down winter jackets. He was a cabinet maker, a chimney sweep, a roofer and a handyman. Al and Shirley eventually divorced, and Al stayed on in the Bitterroot Valley, perfectly content in his wood-heated log home.
Al’s daily life was his personal ministry in action — devoted to being of service to people. He was always on the go, committed to Christ’s message of helping others. He volunteered regularly at Haven House food bank and at the SAFE thrift store.
He was well-known in the area as the “great recycler,” finding new “homes” for people’s unwanted furniture, books, and household goods; taking mountains of cardboard to the recycling center; collecting wood scraps to use in his stoves; and transporting discarded produce to neighbors to use as animal feed.
Al remained very physically active into his late 80s, and was tickled that people thought that he looked like “an old 65.” He had a well-equipped, wood-working shop where he crafted furniture and helped friends with a multitude of repairs. He was one of those guys who decided not to learn to use a computer, because he would rather read from his large stack of magazines and newspapers he subscribed to. He wrapped Christmas gifts in Peanuts cartoons from the newspapers.
Al had many friends throughout Western Montana’s Bitterroot Valley and points beyond. Al will be remembered for his cheerful hospitality at his log home among the pines, along Tamarack Creek. He had a great sense of humor and always had time to converse with neighbors and friends who dropped in for a visit. Al was an easy-going, thoughtful and decent man.
We will all miss Al!
A Celebration of Life for Al will be held September 20, 2025, from 2:00–5:00 p.m., upstairs at the Bitterroot Brewery in Hamilton, Montana.