By Delaware State University
More than 130 people gathered on May 2 to celebrate Susan Young Browne’s 108th birthday with a special dinner at Whatcoat United Methodist Church of Dover, Del.
Attendees included Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer, and Levy Court Commissioners Joanne Masten and Terry Pepper. Those present expressed profound amazement and heartfelt admiration for Young Browne, who is currently the oldest living resident of Dover, according to Dover Mayor Robin R. Christensen, who also took part in the celebration.
Young Browne still walks very well – as she proved when she strolled into the event escorted by her son James W. Young. Her mind and her articulation skills are still good. And according to her daughter Lynette Young Overby, who served as the event’s emcee, Mrs. Young Browne still drives her car.
Gov. Meyer could not stay away from the event. “I came to learn from you what I need to do to live so long,” he said to Mrs. Young Browne.
Born April 24, 1918, in Lincoln, Del., Susan was the 10th of 12 children of her parents, George and Susie Brown. By the time she was school age, her father – a tenant farmer – had moved the family to a 40-acre farm located between Houston and Milford, Del.
Educated in the segregated education system of those years, Mrs. Young Browne attended a one-room school in Houston, Del., and then attended the high school on the campus of the then-State College for Colored Students. She then enrolled in that College and graduated in 1945 with a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education.
After beginning her teaching career in 1945 with brief periods at Ellendale Elementary School and John Wesley Elementary School in Milford. Ms. Young Browne then taught at Lockwood Elementary School in Hartly. Del., from 1946 to 1956. She then taught at Booker T. Elementary School in Dover while also serving as the business manager for her husband’s school bus service.
With that district’s end of segregated education in 1965, Susan was reassigned to teach at Fairview Elementary School, where she taught until her retirement in 1977 – which completed a 30-year teaching career.
In a 2020 interview, Mrs. Young Browne said that after having been a teacher in segregated and integrated schools, she said that she preferred teaching in the colored schools but had no problem teaching white students. “I had to adjust the same as the children had to adjust,” she said. “Students accepted you as their teacher. I didn’t have any problem with them.”
As a retiree, she became a world traveler, taking trips to California, Hawaii, Alaska, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and other destinations. Many of those trips were taken with her second husband, Dr. Clifton Browne, a Delaware State social work professor, whom she married in 1993. He passed away in 2001. James E. Young, her first husband, passed away in 1988.
Mrs. Young Browne is a longtime member of Whatcoat United Methodist Church of Dover, where she has served as an usher and a trustee and, over the years, has belonged to a number of the church’s organizations. She is a life member of the National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa Alpha Pi Chapter.