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Equipment manager James Brown stands at the basketball rack before a Middletown Middies game against Mason Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008, at Wade E. Miller Gymnasium at Vail Middle School in Middletown. Brown, 43, passed away Sunday, Oct. 12, at his home.Click to enlarge

James Brown gets basketballs ready for a halftime warmup during Middletown's division I sectional finals loss to Princeton Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008, at Xavier University's Cintas Center in Cincinnati.Click to enlarge

MIDDLETOWN — People like James Brown — those full of life, those whose smiles light up a high school gymnasium, those who give more they ask — are taken for granted.

Then when they're gone, we mourn our lost treasure.

James Henry Brown was more valuable than a trunk full of gold, silver and diamonds.

Those fortunate enough to know Brown — and if you ever met him, you never forgot him — are feeling a loss today.

Brown, a 1985 Middletown High School graduate, never left the school. He served as the school's sports equipment manager — he guarded the basketballs and footballs with the tenacity of a Brink's driver — for more than 20 years.

Brown, 43, passed away Sunday morning at home, said his mother, Catherine.

He had outpatient hernia surgery last month, but when his blood pressure escalated, he was hospitalized for 11 days, his mother said.

He was released from the hospital on Thursday, Oct. 9, and attended the Middies game the next night against Lakota West.

Brown was hospitalized and missed the Middies' 42-39 upset over Colerain the week earlier. Jason Krause, the Middies first-year coach, visited Brown in the hospital and presented him with a game ball.

On Monday morning, that ball and other memories of Brown's life — and a sack of prescription medicines — sat on the kitchen table.

Brown, a client of Butler County Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, lived with his parents, James and Catherine Brown, on Main Street, in the shadows of Barnitz Stadium.

He was at home in both places.

His father, James Edward Brown, an equipment manager for the Cincinnati Bengals, received a phone call Sunday morning in East Rutherford — hours before the Bengals played the N.Y. Jets — informing him that his son was ill.

He alerted Coach Marvin Lewis, who excused him from the game and encouraged him to return to Middletown.

On Monday, Brown, wearing a Bengals golf shirt, sat at his kitchen table and recalled his son's love affair with the Middies. When Brown was 3, he heard the Middie marching band practicing at Barnitz Stadium, so — like any curious child — he walked from his back yard to the stadium.

His blood turned purple.

Years later, the elder Brown came home and his wife alerted him their son was missing.

As he told the story, a smile crossed his face. He found his son sitting in the stands with the band members.

"He belonged there," his father said. "He was where he needed to be."

For James Brown, that place was Wade E. Miller or Barnitz Stadium or anywhere where Middies gathered.

Bob Ronai, MHS boys basketball coach, called Brown the "heart and soul" of the high school athletic program.

"He bled purple," Ronai said. "He loved the Middies."

And anybody who possessed his passion for purple. Every year, Ronai said, Brown purchased the coaches Christmas presents.

"He had fun in life," he said.

But Brown took his equipment manager duties seriously. Ronai remembered one year when the Middies played in a pre-season scrimmage with several teams in Springboro.

Cincinnati St. Xavier forgot to bring practice basketballs, and the coach asked Ronai if his team could borrow the Middie balls.

No problem, Ronai said.

But he forgot to tell Brown.

Big mistake.

"He nearly tackled the manager," Ronai said with a hearty laugh. "He was serious about his job. He was part of our program."

When the Middies received warm-ups and gym shoes, Brown received warm-ups and gym shoes. When the Middies won, he cheered, and when the Middies lost, he cried.

A hallway in the school is named after him, and in 1997, Brown was inducted into the school's Pigskin-Roundball Gold Medal Club.

They called him "Mr. Middletown High."

Mark Kerns, an assistant basketball coach, called Brown "the epitome of what being a Middie is all about."

And Bishop Rudolph Pringle called Brown's love of the Middies "irreplaceable."

"He was a Middie at heart," Pringle said. "He was one of a kind."

Elmon Prier, a veteran educator and minister, said other students could learn lessons from Brown's determination.

"If they took their ability and used it like James, they could all be champions," Prier said. "He didn't have what they have and he did it."

The late Ed "Skeeter" Payne, a former MHS athletic director, once said of Brown: "He's living out his dream of always being a Middie."

Besides his parents, Brown is survived by two brothers, Charles, 44, and Curtis, 41. Arrangements at Hall-Jordan & Pretty Memorial Chapel.

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