Aadria A. Brown

After battling cancer, in various forms, Aadria Brown passed away on March 9, 2010 at the Pathways Hospice Care Center in Loveland, Colorado. Aadria was born in Cleveland, Ohio on April 16, 1976. She moved to Wyoming in 1984. While she moved around throughout the state, most of her childhood was spent in Rawlins. It was during this time that Aadria had her first cancer diagnosis and battled it off-and-on throughout her teenage years. As a student at Rawlins High School, Aadria competed in forensics where twice she won the right to compete at the National Forensics League tournament. During one of these tournaments, she was recruited to go to San Francisco State University on a communications scholarship. At San Francisco State she earned a bachelor's and master's degrees in English with an emphasis on Literature. She also developed a talent for writing, composing many poems and a novel that is now available on Amazon and Lulu.com. After college, Aadria worked in a variety of fields, including health care, computer technology, sales, secretarial, and retail in California, Wyoming and Colorado. She lost most her vision to a retinal disease in 2004, but continued to look for ways to contribute to society, such as giving presentations to classrooms about the challenges faced by vision loss. It was also during this time that she met the love of her life, Russ Brown. Aadria defeated cancer again in 2007 but could not survive this latest round that was diagnosed in June, 2009 Aadria is survived by her devoted husband, Russ; her mother-in-law and father-in-law, Norm and Donna Brown; her sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Trish and Chase Swift; her "surrogate brother", Ryan Medhurst; her guide dog, Roz; and her "angel kitty", Isabelle. Aadria's family would like to thank the staffs at the PVH Oncology Department, Evergreen Home Health Care, and Pathways Hospice for their professionalism, kindness and caring. A celebration of life will be held on April 17, 2010 at the Brown family farm in Wellington. Contributions can be made to the Aadria A. Brown Memorial Fund, in care of Bohlender Funeral Chapel, 121 W. Olive, Ft. Collins, CO 80524.