The inconquerable, inimitable Josephine Beal Brown

[Jan Lundquist]

Jo deserves so much more attention than she gets. She will be remembered for following Townsend faithfully, and dutifully, without question, wherever he was called. But she was brought to her breaking point and ready to call it quits more than once. Each time, somehow, she found the strength within herself to chose Townsend, even with all the drama and disruptions and drama that came with the job.

Throughout much of the thirties, young Mrs. Townsend Brown wa quite the Zanesville socialite, chairing this committee, attending that event, and hosting something else, all the while playing a mean game of bridge. That brief period of time would be her last taste of the life she might once have expected to be hers for the duration.

But Jo was more than just another of the "ladies who lunch" group. The bright and ambitious young women of the times knew that good secretarial skills could take them far in life, and, Jo made certain to master hers early on. As Townsend's personal secretary, she would transcribe and type his correspondence with perfect accuracy. She also kept the family books and held outside jobs as well, one of which I will write about in another post. She could have become an executive, in her own right, had she not been following a happy-footed man.

But her most interesting job and the one know of only second-hand, via "Twigsnapper," was her reported service as a courier in Stephenson's WWII NYC-DC network. But I, personally, I think she was a little on the spooky side herself, even before Intrepid took up residence in the Rockefeller Building. Jo, oh, Jo...when did you know what you were signing up for?

You could had have not the slightest idea, when you let your heart be wooed on Buckeye Lake!

[Jan Lundquist]

Paul, if you see this, can you correct the misspelling in the title? TY, Jan.

I am sure I asked Linda how Jo and Townsend met, but I do not remember the story. I like to imagine that it went something like this:

Jo had long ago decided that Townsend Brown, with the lake-blue eyes, was the most fascinating and interesting man in town. The sixteen-year old, with the shoulders of a swimmer had been the focus of her attention when she attended the city’s the first public radio concert, held in the Presbyterian Church (January, 1922). The townsfolk crowded in to hear the new “wireless instruments,” and it was reported that “the aerial concert was entertaining, though interrupted by cross currents and local amateur meddlers whose radiograph dots and dashes insisted on punctuating the music that floated through the air from Newark, N.J., and Pittsburgh and Chicago.”

Townsend was too pre-occupied with his equipment to notice that a thirteen year old girl in the audience was appraising him curiously. Jo knew he was supposed to be a genius. The man who introduced him said that seven years ago, Townsend Brown had been the first person in town to assemble his own radio, but what the the gossips said about the boy was even more intriguing. According to them, he had been a devoted nudist from the age of three, when he he was found naked in the town fountain.

She was a junior in high school when she read that he and his ma had returned from Pasadena, making a stop along the way to visit the “family oil fields” in Kansas. When he made the front page as the“electrical wizard” expounding on the Shenandoah tragedy, she decided that a discreet prodding of her girlfriends was in order. Yes, the town’s most eligible bachelor was still single, though the bookkeeper-woman from the family firm was said to have her eye on him.

But once Josephine Beale put herself in Townsend’s path, no one else ever had a chance. She listened when he told her that everything was interconnected through a mysterious, newly discovered force that no one yet understood. She heard his pride when he related that Dr. Paul Biefeld of Denison University had sent him, special delivery, if you will, to CalTech, the very best school for the kind of study he was doing. And she felt his joy, when he spoke of the the exquisite thrill, after a thousand different experiments, in finding the one that proved a principle. She knew, beyond a doubt, that this man was going to lead an extraordinary life and that she was meant to be his rock.