Why Pam Brown?

By BILL DURYEA

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 26, 1999

Meet Pam Brown, the Most Important Person in Florida The most important person in Florida has cats named Mo and Harry and a catfish named Ralph that lives in a backyard pond. Her car radio is tuned to the left of the dial (emphasis on left), she doesn't much care who's quarterbacking the Bucs and it makes her sick how little teachers are paid. Why Not Pam Brown? Not everyone thinks we were looking for the right person when we went looking for Pam Brown. Among the dissenters is former state Sen. Curt Kiser, who says the baby boomer forecast is as revelatory as predicting that the sun will rise in the east.

Pam Brown is the woman of David Colburn's dreams.

The University of Florida professor has never met her, but he has been conjuring an image of her for quite some time. He has had help from Lance deHaven-Smith, a professor at Florida State with whom he is writing a book provisionally (and not so imaginatively) titled Florida: Looking to the Future.

The following exchange was created by splicing together their independent descriptions of the Most Important Person in Florida.

Colburn: "She's a woman. She's white. She's college educated."

deHaven-Smith: "She had a career, had a family."

Colburn: "She worked, but not for equal pay."

deHaven-Smith: "She's divorced, maybe widowed."

Colburn: "She's concerned about women, but she's not necessarily a member of NOW. She's environmentally conscious, but she's not necessarily a member of a group."

dehaven-Smith: "This is a woman who burned her bra, that quit making coffee for her boss. She told you to stop calling her "girl,' who expected her husband to help clean up the house. It's the return of the '60s radical with gray hair."

Colburn: "I don't buy that argument. I edited all that stuff out of the book."

deHaven-Smith: "She was turned off by organized religion, but she yearns for spirituality."

Colburn: "She supports education, because that's where (women) made their success."

deHaven-Smith: "She became a Republican, but she's liberal on race issues."

Colburn: "(She) voted for Reagan, but wasn't fully comfortable with the Reagan Revolution."

Later, you ask Brown if she recognizes herself in that description.

"A lot of that is me," she says. "I wasn't a bra-burner. I wasn't that militant."

The religious conversion is spot on, she says. So is the support for education.

But there is one thing that she disagrees with completely.

"I never would have voted for Reagan."