Jack C. Brown

Jack C. Brown, Age 98, former United States Attorney

Jack Brown Chapler was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on June 7, 1919, to Harold and Catherine Chapler. His mother dies from an infection in a ruptured appendix while he was quite young, and he was adopted and reared by his maternal grandparents, Fred James and Gertrude Booth Brown; renames Jack Chapler Brown.

The only child of an only child, he entered the Indianapolis Public School System in the fall of 1926, attending Public Schools 66 and 84. He graduated from Shortridge High School in 1936. He attended undergraduate school at Indiana University in Bloomington where he was a member of Phi Delta Theta social fraternity. He then attended Columbia University Law School in New York where he was a member of Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity and Campbell Moot Court.

Graduating in December 1941, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he entered the armed forces as a “Voluntary Inductee” in 1942. He was among the 340 from the class of 518 who satisfactorily completed the first seventeen week course at the Medical Administrative Corps Officer Candidate School, Camp Barkley, Texas, on November 17, 1944. He was later Honorably Discharged in 1944, incident of a respiratory condition. Later, while United State Attorney, he entered the Air Force Reserve and served until March 27, 1957 at which time he was Honorably Discharged with the rank of Captain.
Jack was elected the first World War II Commander of the Broad Ripple American Legion Post 312, which was the largest of the then fifty-six American Legion posts in the Eleventh District, with over 1,000 members.

From 1945-1947, Jack was an Associate Attorney at Baker & Daniels. He next practiced with an older Attorney, James C. Courtney, as “Courtney and Brown”. He was an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in Marion County from 1947-1948 and also served as Chairman of the Marion County Young Republicans from 1946-1948. In 1953, he was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, covering sixty of the ninety-two counties of the state. He ad two other young attorneys were called the “Three Musketeers” as they were the youngest of the then ninety U.S. Attorneys in the United States and its territories. Jack was then reappointed to a second year term, but resigned in 1958 to return to the private practice of law with three term United States Senator, William E. Jenner, as Jenner and Brown. Their practice continued until Senator Jenner’s death in 1985. Jack continued in the practice until 2005.

Mr. Brown was a fifty-year member of the Indiana State Bar Association, Indianapolis Bar Association, Federal Bar Association, Bar Association of the Seventh Federal Circuit, American Judicature Society, Lawyers Association of Indianapolis, and the Lawyer’s Club. He was active in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, serving as Director and Vice President, as well as a Past President and Past District Governor in the Exchange Club; State Director and Vice President of the Indiana Museum Society. He was a member of the Indianapolis Athletic Club, the Indianapolis Racquet Club, the Highland Golf and Country Club, and various cultural and social organizations. He was a Director of the Olympians, predecessor to the Pacers, Professional basketball team. He was appointed as honorary Sagamore of the Wabash by Indiana Governor Handley.
Jack was an avid student of Scripture. For many years, she led the Friday morning Bible discussion of the Christian Business Men’s Committee of Indianapolis. He served three terms as Chairman thereof and was a three-year Director of the International Christian Business Men’s Committee.

For several decades, he traveled the United States and Canada, sharing his Christian testimony as to how he found purpose and meaning in life. He shared at breakfasts, luncheons, banquets, conferences, ad retreats sponsored by the then six-hundred CBMC Committees in the United States and the then four-hundred in Canada.
For twenty-nine years, Jack was a State Director of the Child Evangelism Fellowship of Indiana. He was also a Director of Whitehouse mission during that period. He was a Director of Child Care Foundation of Indiana, a Director of the Southeast Asia Foundation for Evangelism and Education, a Director and Officer of the Warren Cox Evangelistic Association. For twenty-five years, he was a Director of the Christian Legal Society of Indiana.

Jack helped state Faith Missionary Church in 1967 where fifty-percent of the budget was allocated of missions. This was considered a rather daring concept at that time. He was the Adult Sunday School Supervisor and an Adult Sunday School Teacher. Prior, he had taught Adult Sunday School class at Hope Christian and missionary Alliance Church. In the late seventies and early eighties, Jack taught the Adult Sunday School class at Castleton Baptist Church, of which he died a member.

Like his mentor and friend, Clay Conner, Sr. (a Bataan death march escapee who organized a large guerrilla force who harassed the Japanese in the Philippines until General Mac Arthur’s triumphant return), Jack’s life verse was Romans 10-:9. His life motto was “Life is short, t’will soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”
Very individualistic, Jack’s heart Doctor thusly described him: “Fantastic sense of humor; low blood pressure; and stubborn as a mule.”

Jack was preceded in death by their only daughter, Beverly Ann Brown Hineman. He is survived by wife of 71 years, Fairlie Frost Brown and his only son, Douglas Chapl.er Brown, and Douglas’ only son, Nathaniel Chapler Brown. He also is survived by his deceased daughter’s three children, Elizabeth Hineman, Jay Hineman, and Jack Hineman and their families, including three great-grandchildren.