THANK YOU: Jonathan Brown

​Jonathan Brown: Jonathan Brown is the man. Without his early encouragements, website development and paddling alongside, much as possible, the mission / goals likely would not have been met. Jonathan was a critical cog in the wheel to accomplish the Source to Sea expedition. Thank you Jonathan, cause the benefactors were the Children with T1 Diabetes. Also because of you and your dedicated co-workers, I was able to learn / get somewhat tech smart, taking basically one electronic communication device . My iPhone Six Plus made it possible for me to place voice calls, send messages, take photos / videos, write Blogs and timely get them to my niece for posting to my website.

Jonathan is actually the person that introduced me to world famous English Adventurer, Dave Cornthwaite, who gave me the name: Grey Beard Adventurer. Dave and Rod Wellington and Richard Sojourner also paddled with Jonathan and I on the most difficult short adventure of my life. When Dave, A Source to the Mississippi River paddle on the Wolf River, southwest Tennessee.

SUPAS the entire Wolf River. An adventure with Jonathan and others I will never forget. This expedition, even though only eight days long, was a major theme in the recent book “River Angels” written by Rod Wellington. The book covers much about this God forsaken journey through likely the deepest swamps in the mid-south. The book is a colorful documentation of a strange adventure. I not only accurately depicts the difficulties of paddling through such wilderness but gets to the root of the issues with personalities and other unusual happenings. 

River Angels is available at CrowBooks.ca. Maybe one day, if I live long enough, I will write the rest of the story.
Jonathan also designed the Grey Beard Adventurer logo, used throughout the journey down river for 2345 miles. I am committed to use this logo depicting the Adventures of Grey Beard for the rest of my life. Love this logo and Jonathan. Thank You Jonathan Brown for all and mostly for just being my friend. Your words of encouragement made it all worthwhile. May you be blessed in your future. Now that you live in California we won’t see you often, but our hearts will be with you. Memphis will miss you.

I vividly remember the last time I saw you. We were paddling in harsh conditions between Memphis and Helena Arkansas. You were paddling Dave Cornthwaite’s old Swim 1,000 paddle board. That day we sat out a horrendous storm, not able to paddle the last mile to reach Helena until after the storm passed. It was frightening. We weathered the storm arriving safely at John Ruskey’s, Quapaw Canoe Company in time for a goods night rest. You had two days left you could devote to paddling. Our calculations looked like it would take three days to reach Greenville, Mississippi. As it turned out, we were correct in our calculations, Richard and I did have difficulties reaching Greenville, Mississippi. Again, as you so often do, you made the right call. It took us three days and we almost didn’t make it before dark.

Thank you Jonathan for all you did to get out the votes, I know your efforts we significant and for that I am blessed to be able to call you my friend.