Long-time Port Resident, Ailene Delores Brown, Dies At 84

PORT WASHINGTON, NY — Longtime Port Washington resident and record shop owner Ailene Delores Brown died Feb. 21 in Manhasset at the age of 84.

Brown, who was from Trinidad, lived in Port Washington from 1965 to about 2012. She ran the family’s business, Brown Sound, a record shop on Main Street in the 70s, with her husband, Thomas.

Brown was born Ailene Roxburgh in Trinidad to a native Trinidadian woman and a Scotch emigrant who settled there. She was a hard worker who grew up in a time much different from today on a working homestead, learning to prepare bread and butter, and walked to a nearby convent to attend school. She left Trinidad for Venezuela and then moved on to Canada, learning to speak both Spanish and French along the way.

Brown encountered racism early on in life while living in Canada, but did not let it stop her and eventually moved to the United States.

“We called her savage,” her daughter Ruth Brown said of her family’s admiration for the matriarch’s indomitable spirit.

She settled down sometime in the 1960s with Thomas Brown, the son of a well-known local police officer who started the Police Athletic League in Port Washington.

Ruth described her mother as an intelligent, loving, genuine, and classy lady who was “a fighter all the way to the end.”

“She was a shero to many,” Ruth added.

After Brown Sound closed, Brown worked for many years at a software company and then a dry cleaning store in Manhasset up until about three years ago. She endured a five-year battle with lung cancer, but suffered a mini-stroke recently and was hospitalized at North Shore University Hospital Medical Center in Manhasset.

Ruth said that Brown received her “shero” moniker from her family in Trinidad, who told her, “She did it her way. She was a shero. She wanted to have her independence.”

Brown is also survived by her son, Mark; stepsons, Alan and Tommy; grandson, Kyroh; her sister, Glenda; and brother, Carlos; as well as many nieces and nephews. Family members “will all remember her legacy and love,” Ruth said.

A memorial mass will be held at St. Peter of Alcantara R.C. Church in Port Washington on March 6 at 11 a.m.