William Winn Brown

Beloved husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, brother, son, and friend, William Winn Brown, 78, passed away on Saturday afternoon, August 24, 2013, at the family ranch southwest of Lovell, Wyoming.  “Winn” was born on August 28, 1934, in the old two-story hospital in Lovell; the first child of Alma Taylor Brown and Edith Stella Winn Brown.

Winn attended Lovell schools and graduated from Lovell High School in 1952, then spent two years in the U.S. Army Rangers, training as a paratrooper in Panama. While there he managed to survive a parachute malfunction adventure, which he forever claimed took ½ inch off his six foot height.
Winn served in the Southern States Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from 1956 through February of 1958. He attended Northwest College for awhile, doing rodeo events on the side, until he met and married his sweetheart, Genielle Tew.  Winn then transferred to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he graduated in Agricultural Economics in 1963.

After BYU, Genielle and Winn established their home in Byron, Wyoming. They moved to the family ranch property southwest of Lovell in 1970, where the family still lives.
Winn worked several years for Cache Valley Breeders and Montana Breeders, teaching cattle management to ranchers all over Montana and Wyoming. At the same time, he worked his father’s farm and eventually combined it with his Uncle Elgen’s farm, to realize the original boundaries as homesteaded by Ebenezer Brown in 1902.  Over the years Winn added other neighboring parcels to achieve his life goal of establishing a family ranch property.

Winn’s life was centered around the principles of the restored gospel. He will be remembered for his many stories of his missionary experiences, family and church history events, his ranching adventures, and of his early rodeo and hunting days.  Ask any of his ten children about “when Dad roped the elk”, or the raft trip down the Big Horn Canyon, or “The Mysterious Disappearance of the Military MP Jeep”. He loved Robert Service poems and could recite whole stanzas. Winn was a true cowboy, who never met a stranger.  

Winn was preceded in death by his parents, his younger brother Lionel Dow Brown (Bud), and his son Curtis Taylor Brown (d. June 17, 2013).

He is survived by his siblings Joseph Guernsey (Gurn) Brown, Persis Ann Skinner, Val Young Brown,  Alma Taylor Brown Jr. (Buster), and Emma Louise Christoffersen;  his wives Genielle, Bobbie and Sheryl, and nine children; Cindy Hansen, Scott Allan Brown, Lorilyn Beck, Kody Winn Brown, Christine King, Tricia Lee Garner, Travis Merrill Brown, Leah Nicole Lundquist, and William Michael Brown.  

Graveside services were held Wednesday morning, August 28, 2013 – which would have been Winn’s 79th birthday.  He lays at rest in the Penrose Cemetery.

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