John Smith Memorial Site
Mary Brown - A true friend.
Mary Brown is a truly fascinating lady. She is a tough and determined business woman with an admiration of westerns and of John Smith. In fact it was her admiration of John Smith that prompted her to start organising a little event in Phoenix called Festival Of The West, an event that has grown into one of the biggest (if not the biggest) western festivals in the world today.
Mary admired John's work for many years before she decided she had to find and meet him. Once the decision was made she set about the task and made contact with John. There followed a friendship that lasted for years until John's death in 1995.
Mary will happily talk about her friendship with John, but in the end their friendship was private and will be respected as such. One thing I would like to pass on though from what Mary told me is this. That John was a happy man and felt he had been fortunate and had a good life. So if you read some of the articles written about how bad things had got for John, please remember what Mary said.
With Mary's permission I will reproduce an article she wrote.