After graduating high school from Packer Collegiate Institute in 1966, Vera (Grant) Brown attended Swarthmore for her Freshman and Sophomore years. While at Swarthmore Vera was a member of the softball team. She met her husband, Frank Brown, early in her Freshman year at Swarthmore, and they married immediately after his graduation in 1968. Because Frank attended Planning School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Vera moved with him and spent her Junior and Senior years at UNC. Vera graduated from UNC in 1970 with Highest Honors in Political Science and was awarded membership in Phi Beta Kappa Honorary Fraternity. She worked as a planning consultant for a private planning firm and worked on an Economic Base Study for the City of Paterson, New Jersey. As soon as their youngest child was in elementary school, she attended Pace University School of Law, where she graduated with Honors in 1988. Frank and Vera are partners in their law firm, (Murphy, James, Brown & Brown, LLC), which is located in Pearl River, NY, where they specialize in estate planning and estate administration. Vera is also active in her local Village of Wesley Hills. She has been Chairman or Deputy Chairman of the Wesley Hills Planning Board since 1983. She is the mother of two children, Ken (an attorney), and Laura (formerly a social worker). She also has two grandchildren, Cassidy (who is 17) and Madeleine (who is 16) who reside in northern Virginia. Vera and Frank spend as much time as they can in northern Virginia in order to see them as much as possible. Vera and Frank purchased a house in Swarthmore in order to be able to spend more time cheering on the Garnet.
