PILLAR OF LIME HALL AND FOUNDATION FOR FOOTBALL
One of the best-known residents of Lime Hall, Clive Brown has died.
(Clive Brown)
Mr Brown, a football administrator and sports and news correspondent died Saturday. He was 66.
Mr Brown was best known for the Lime Hall Corner League and several football events centered on Lime Hall. He conceived and established the League and carried its development for nearly two decades. For years, the Lime Hall Community (Corner) League was the major community football league in the country and Mr Brown, known to many simply as Clive or ‘Dukie” walked and drove miles to solicit funds to make the competition happen.
He has been ill, paralysed from the waist down with a still unexplained disease for more than six years. Mr Brown required 24-hour care. He was supported and assisted at his home by Baron Pyne and later Lorna Nolan.
Mr Pyne knew him for nearly fifty years and said Mr Brown was a great man who died while being fed Saturday.
Many of those who remember Mr Brown said he often used his funds to keep the league going and even to give to teams who wanted to enter but didn’t have resources.
He put Lime Hall on the map with his reporting of his competitions, and football in St Ann generally. Over three decades Clive Brown worked as a news correspondent for RJR, the Gleaner, the now defund Sunday Herald and JBC, as well as the North Coast Times, Jamaica Observer and IRIE FM. He never tired of reporting, up to when he became ill, on events affecting people in Lime Hall and nearby communities.
Beverley Brown, sister said Clive had a lot of friends. “He was quiet and loving,” she said. She said he wanted to run as councillor one day but his passion was football in Lime Hall where he also contributed to the formation of Benfica which reached the National Premier League.
President of the St Ann Football Association who worked closely with Brown Clive Brown, Danny Beckford told North Coast Times that Clive Brown was “a pioneer in football administration and sports journalism second to none.” He said Brown lived, “An exemplary life of selflessness and sacrifice for the sports arena, particularly football. Walk good Dukie we will miss you bad bad.”
S&C LEAGUE
(Councillor Genevor Gordon Bailey)
Councillor for the Lime Hall Division in the St Ann Municipal Corporation, Genevor Gordon Bailey told the North Coast Times “I have only good things to say about Clive Brown. He was an asset to the Lime Hall Community.”
She spoke about his involvement in football and how she was introduced to him by late MP Shahine Robinson who was a big supporter of the Lime Hall League. She said she, Councillor Gordon Bailey had taken the directive from the late MP to support the work of the League. That support had manifested itself in improvements to the Lime Hall field, especially drainage and fencing. Mrs Gordon Bailey said that post-COVID-19 she had named the League S&C Lime Hall League in support of Shahine (S) and Clive (C).
(Desmond Gilmore)
“Clive was a kind of pioneer in Lime Hall when it comes to football,” said Desmond Gilmore, former Mayor of St Ann’s Bay and former Councillor of Lime Hall Division.
“He always knew the score and ran the [community] League even before it was formalised,” he said. He recalled that Mr Brown was almost always at every match played at the community football field and getting scores and details for his reportage. “Lime Hall has lost a very important community man,” the former Mayor said.
He leaves to mourn two sisters and two brothers.
