Life story:Professor emeritus Gordon Brown saw possibilities in the 'what ifs'

This story is published on Columbia Missourian.

photo courtesy of Brown's daughter-Sarah Laufenberg

Sarah Laufenberg has a collection of dolls from all over the world, brought to her by her father, Gordon Brown. They’re souvenirs of the 27 countries he visited in his life’s mission to improve the world.

Gordon Brown died July 29, 2020, at the age of 80.

In his 30-year connection with MU, he brought new perspectives to the Department of Health Management and Informatics, said Patricia Alafaireet, director of applied health informatics.

Brown was one of the first people to see the importance of integrating health services management and health informatics programs, creating the Department of Health Management and Informatics, now a part of the School of Medicine, professor and associate chair of the department of Health Management and Informatics Lanis Hicks said.

Lifelong learner

Gordon received a bachelor’s degree in industrial administration from Iowa State University in 1962 and a doctorate in hospital and health administration from the University of Iowa in 1970.

He served as an officer in the Army from 1962–65, and also worked as a federal compliance officer for the federal government during the summer of 1966. He also worked with the World Health Organization for two years from 1970-72 in Cali, Colombia.

In 1972, he accepted a faculty position at Penn State University before coming to MU in 1979.

After he retired, he was a dedicated and generous donor and volunteer to the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture, said Adam Saunders, the development director of Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture. Brown was also a member of the Golden K Kiwanis club.

Mark Laufenberg, Brown’s son-in-law, said Brown kept learning and reading to improve his mind and understand different perspectives.

“He was an avid reader, and enjoyed exploring emerging concepts and extracting those that he thought could applied to his particular field,” Laufenberg said.

In his 80s, he still attended a weekly book group meeting with contemporaries at the Trinity Presbyterian Church, Laufenberg said.

His attraction to new ideas made him an excellent problem solver, Laufenberg said.

For example, when he was chair of the Department of Health Management and Informatics, one of his biggest challenges was budgetary, Hicks said.

Brown successfully set up a consultant group with the faculty. The group helped local health care organizations do community surveys to learn the characteristics of the populations in their service areas and a variety of other service projects for community organizations. The consultant project generated revenue for the department, helping to ease the financial strain. It also provided important services to local communities.

Saunders said Brown liked to play “the what if” game.

“He would always say, ‘what if we tried this,’ ‘what if we tried that,’ ‘what if we worked with this group or that group’...,” Saunders said. It was the way he thought his way through to innovation and problem-solving.

One of his ideas was making the Golden K Kiwanis club a partner with the Center for Urban Agriculture.

Brown had recently worked with Saunders on a home garden mentoring program, coming up with ways to help older farmers or people in agriculture pass their knowledge on to younger generations.

His daughter remembers the energy her father put into the family farm just outside of Columbia when he came home after work.

“My father wouldn’t plop down on the sofa after work,” she said. “He would do whatever needed to be done on his farm with my mom, taking care of things such as moving cattle, mending fences, mowing our 5-acre yard or cutting wood.”

She said her parents often worked until after dark. But they loved it, she said.

Mentor with impact

Brian Hensel, assistant teaching professor and alumnus of the MU Health Management and Informatics program, is a former student and a good friend of Brown.

He said Brown made a fundamental and positive difference in his career, encouraging him to maintain a focus in health administration. After Hensel completed his doctorate, Brown helped him get accepted into a postdoctoral fellowship at MU that would build on his experience and training.

“I believe this was critical in enabling me to do something I love to do, which is teaching in health administration,” Hensel said.

Alafaireet, also a former student of Brown, said she once saw him stand up and talk about important theories for four hours without a pause.

“Well, he didn’t always do that to us because we all got tired,” Alafaireet said. But his ability to summon all his knowledge in that way impressed her.

Equity and kindness

Brown’s work as a federal compliance officer took him to the Deep South in 1966. His job was to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and identify hospitals that weren’t complying with integration mandates and making such hospitals did not receive Medicare funding, Laufenberg said.

It was this early experience in his adulthood that made him realize the importance of treating people equally and with dignity.

Traveling was an important part of his life. He worked in 27 countries and visited 45, including many developing countries, helping to improve health systems.

In the last 10 years of his life, he participated in a teaching program in Saudi Arabia where he insisted that his classes include women.

“There are other universities that are doing these international programs at that time, but some of them are entirely composed of men,” Laufenberg said. She said she was proud of her father for seeing an opportunity to promote gender equity there.

After his diagnosis, Laufenberg and her two brothers took turns staying with their parents and helping with health care logistics and the farm. He is survived by his wife, Kathleen Brown, of 53 years. He is also survived by his brothers Gary, James and Jerald Brown.

Laufenberg, who is a founding member of Academy High, an independent high school in Champaign, Ill., said she learned a lot from her father. “He taught me the importance of learning and education, the importance of hard work, and probably most importantly, the importance of treating everyone with kindness and consideration and love.”

Profile: MU Police Chief Doug Schwandt bids policing goodbye with pride

This story is published on Columbia Missourian

photo by Zephyrus Li

As he leaves policing in Columbia after 40 years, retiring MU Police Chief Doug Schwandt warned against stereotyping police officers at a time when instances of police brutality are coming to wider public attention in the U.S.

“Even though you can do all the right things over the years, there can be one incident that somebody does something inappropriate. But should that be a reflection of the whole agency?” he said. “I would argue to be careful with that.”

Twenty years ago, when Schwandt retired from the Columbia Police Department, he chose the MU Police Department for the next stage of his career.

Schwandt, 63, will retire Aug. 3. In his 20 years with MU police, Schwandt has seen many changes — chief among them that the MU Police Department has become more professional.

“We’ve built a good partnership with our community,” he said. “We have been accredited since 2002. And we have been accredited ‘excellence’ in the last three or four cycles.”

The department is accredited through the Commission on Law Enforcement Accreditation and the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators.

Schwandt said there has been a lot of conversation recently about reforming police training. He agrees it’s important to improve the police officers’ ability to deal with stressful situations without overreacting.

“We have annual training and testing on various topics to ensure the staff can be reinforced with the right way and right mindset to do our business,” he said. “The topics are endless about what (people) need to learn to be a successful law enforcement officer.”

Its training program helps keep the MU Police Department healthy, he said. “That is why we do not see those kinds of things that some of our agencies have seen across the country,” he said.

He pointed out that the MU Police Department is transparent about its training program. “We share those curriculums with our students and with some of our campus leaders,” he said. “We also show people our lesson plans and what our folks are tested on and trained on every year.”

Maj. Brian Weimer, interim chief of the MU Police Department, has observed Schwandt’s efforts to build good relationships with the community.

“He has been involved in getting the department involved with various campus groups. And he encourages all the police staff to do that,” Weimer said.

Schwandt even showed up to serve food at Midnight Breakfast on campus, where he could listen to students’ concerns.

There have been very few opportunities like those since the pandemic began. Schwandt used to go out for lunch with new campus leaders, making sure they knew each other well. In the pandemic, he can only make connections via phone.

“We are not having as much personal interaction,” Schwandt said. “It inhibits the relationship building.”

But he’s optimistic. “We have a resilient campus and strong leadership,” he said.

Sallie Schwandt, his wife, said he is a dependable person. “He will do anything for anybody,” she said. “When someone needs to talk to him about their problems and issues, he is always there with an open heart.”

Doug Schwandt has also worked to strike a balance between work and family. He enjoys being with his grandchildren, watching them play T-ball games.

“We have a close family in MUPD, so we will miss him,” Weimer said. But he’s happy Schwandt will have a chance to spend more time with his family in his retirement.

Schwandt plans to play more pickleball. However, retirement won’t mean the end of serious pursuits.

“I am still fairly young in my mind,” he said. “So, I will find something to do to keep me busy in various fields.”

Profile: A melody from a food expert

Phiya Kushi’s hands are familiar with the textures of two things: food and piano keys.

It is 6 p.m. on a busy weekday. Kushi gets up and goes to the kitchen. He cuts some onions, carrots and celery, then sautés them together in a soup pot to make a miso stew. When the noodles are done, he adds them to the simmering pot of vegetables. His partner Clair Johnson said he is responsible for almost every meal at home.

When he is not cooking, he can be found using his hands playing piano at A Major Music Lessons, a music school on Jackson Street in Columbia.

Glory from the family

Kushi, 60, was born in a reputable family. His parents were leaders in the field of modern macrobiotics. They spent years teaching the public about how to eat a healthy diet. Eating natural food instead of processed food was a crucial part of his parents’ theory.

Kushi remembered living in a big house in Boston when he was a little kid. “At least 20 people were living in the big house with our family, consulting my parents about the knowledge of food,” Kushi recalled. “And the people would change all the time.” His sister, Lily Kushi, kept a record of people living in their house for 10 years and found out that there were around 10,000 people in total. The number impressed little Kushi. He thought it was amazing for his parents to attract so many people. He hoped to be someone like his father.

“My family made a lot of opportunities for me. I grasped the opportunities to be part of my parents’ dreams,” Kushi said. He once worked in warehouses and restaurants featuring macrobiotics. He was also in charge of the Kushi Institute, a school named after his family. As the executive director at the Kushi Institute, he gave speeches and attended seminars, spreading the ideas of his father.

At one time, he was analyzing the recovery of a woman who suffered from melanoma. After the speech, a doctor came to him and said, “The woman in the case was my patient 20 years ago,” he said. “I thought she was going to die in six months at that time.” Kushi felt proud of the positive effect of macrobiotics.

Kushi was immersed in the sound of the crowd brought by his family’s accomplishments. He got used to the appreciation and credit given by the public. At that time, he thought that everything would continue to go in that way.

Still, there is something missing

Kushi’s sister, Lily Kushi, was the first person who brought a different sound to Kushi’s life. “My sister spent all her life with music. She was a big influence on my music journey,” he recalled. The eldest sibling, became a musician, pursuing a different path from her family. At the age of 8, little Kushi sat by his sister’s piano, asking her to show him how to read music. Later on, he bought books and became a self-taught pianist.

His sister moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of her dream about music. Kushi visited her several times in Los Angeles. He noticed she did not eat as healthy as she could. A few years later, Kushi’s sister became very sick. It was Kushi who accompanied her to see the doctor, where they learned she had stage-four cancer. Kushi was shocked by the result. He started to think to himself: “We even cannot save our beloved ones. Are the ideas from my family on the right track?”

Kushi felt depressed when his sister, Lily Kushi, passed away in 1995.

From then on, Kushi tried to find what was missing in his parents’ method.

Kushi looked back at the successful examples of patients’ recovery. He found out that social support played a key role in one’s well-being: “You can tell people what to eat but still, they do not listen. When your friends or family members smoke, you would get that habit since you want to be part of the social group. This is a thing that was not stressed in my parents’ work.” Kushi believes his sister failed to find a good partner to take care of her, which was a main reason for the tragedy.

Meanwhile, Kushi himself was struggling with intimate relationships. He got married at a young age. “At that time, I got lots of naïve notion of how marriage should be,” Kushi said. He admitted that he laid too much emphasis on the traditional role of a husband, “but we young people just naturally love to explore new things.” Kushi discovered that the more he stressed loyalty and commitment in the marriage, the more conflicts he found. His first marriage ended in jealousy and fighting.

“I was going to try again,” Kushi said, recalling the beginning of his second marriage.

But it failed again.

Kushi regarded the second divorce as a nightmare, “it was like Hollywood couple fighting and wives take all the money away, except it was worse because I didn’t have any money.”

After years, Kushi learned to abandon his previous ideas of relationships, “The best way to love is to be unconditional,” he said.

A few years later, his parents both passed away. The familiar sounds in his life-his parents’ words, his sister’ s music, the applause and the cheers-gradually disappeared.

A new life

After his sister’s death and his divorces, Kushi felt isolated in life. He also felt isolated in his career as a spokesperson for his family’s institute. He realized that he had kept instilling macrobiotics ideas as an authoritative professor in front of people, “But it cannot build closeness among your listeners,” he said. “It was like wearing a mask. Teachers and students always keep distance.” Furthermore, Kushi found out he had spent so much time following his parents’ path. He decided to find his own dream.

He met Johnson in Alaska 10 years ago. Johnson later became his partner. She encouraged Kushi to pursue a different path. “It is like turning off the buzzing noise lingering in his mind,” she said.

So, it was time for Kushi to search for a new sound. He came to Columbia and found A Major Music Lessons. “I am always interested in music, “he said. “More importantly, I like teaching people informally, like a friend.” He decided to become a piano teacher there.

He gets to connect with people in the community more closely.

Carol Allers, Kushi’s coworker at A Major Music Lessons, said that Kushi always has solutions to children who are bored during the piano lessons. “He would put aside all music scores and teach children duets and knuckle songs.” In this situation, Kushi would let the children play the simple part and he would play the complicated part. “Children and their parents love him,” Allers said.

Kushi’s life is now full of children’s laughter and melody.

Johnson thought Kushi became happier after taking this job, “The change is like rejuvenating,” she said.

He once taught a deaf student to play Jingle Bells. He showed the student how to play it again and again. The student followed what he did again and again. “He impressed when he could play the song without hearing,” he said. “And I was also impressed by that.”

During the process of teaching music, Kushi finds the similarities between macrobiotics and music, “They both help people acquire a new skill and a new understanding of the universe, a new meaning of life,” he said.

In the future, Kushi will continue to help people using his hands by either playing music, cooking for loved ones or giving them support as a friend to help them through difficult times. “I was once a goal-driven person but now I become wiser,” he said. “I am not going to change the world like my parents did.”

But he is adding his unique melody to this world.