Shriner Tradition of Giving

Local Shriner barbecue crew made a tradition of giving

By Lisa McKinnon u
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 Ventura County Star News
Go to http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/jun/18/seasoned-professionals/
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Photo courtesy Warren Brown In an undated photo, Raymond W. "Brownie" Brown, right, and an unidentified fellow Shriner pose with rib-eye steaks arranged on the custom-made grates used by the Brownie's Shrine BBQ Crew.

Photo courtesy Warren Brown In an undated photo, Raymond W. "Brownie" Brown, right, and an unidentified fellow Shriner pose with rib-eye steaks arranged on the custom-made grates used by the Brownie's Shrine BBQ Crew.
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Photo by Lisa McKinnon Original crew member Harry Maynard, left, and fellow Shriner James Stallings, co-trustee of the barbecue fund, at a recent breakfast gathering in Ventura.

Photo by Lisa McKinnon Original crew member Harry Maynard, left, and fellow Shriner James Stallings, co-trustee of the barbecue fund, at a recent breakfast gathering in Ventura.
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Photo courtesy of Warren Brown In an undated photo, Raymond W. "Brownie" Brown, left, founder of Brownie's Shrine BBQ Crew, and William Garrick arrange rib-eye steaks on a stack of the group's custom-made grates.

Photo courtesy of Warren Brown In an undated photo, Raymond W. "Brownie" Brown, left, founder of Brownie's Shrine BBQ Crew, and William Garrick arrange rib-eye steaks on a stack of the group's custom-made grates.
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It has been more than 20 years since Harry Maynard chopped celery and seasoned chili beans as a member of Brownie's Shrine BBQ Crew. Yet he can reel off the group's recipes as though he used them just last night to feed 500 people at the Ventura County Fairgrounds.

Of course, it helps that the crew's dishes seldom veered from the basics.

"Chili beans, salad, garlic bread, salsa and rib-eye steaks: That was our menu, nothing else," Maynard said with a laugh. "Nobody cared about dessert after that, unless it was ladies night. Then we might have some vanilla ice cream."

Named for late founder Raymond W. "Brownie" Brown, the crew lit its first hardwood-charcoal fire in the early 1960s. The task: feeding 200 or so members of the Ventura Shrine Club at monthly meetings.

Those were the days before much thought was given to the merits of herbal marinades and espresso-powder rubs, and before barbecue had become such a staple of community events that caterers had started to specialize in nothing but.

"They were just hungry," said Warren Brown, who was in his late teens when he was drafted by his father to join the crew.

Soon, Brownie's crew members were dressing in matching jumpsuits and grilling for the Lions Club, the Farm Bureau, assorted chambers of commerce and the Japanese-American Club. When actor-turned-politician Ronald Reagan brought his second campaign for California governor to Ventura, they grilled for him, too.

"He ate a good meal," said Maynard, who in a photo from the event is holding a Reagan-Reinecke sign.

The crew was as hot as a pile of glowing embers throughout the 1970s, when it typically grilled its way through 40,000 steaks every summer — 3,500 of those at a single event.

But by the '80s, crew members were beginning to feel the collective effects of their ages. Some resigned. Others, well, took a ride on what the Shriners call the Black Camel. At the same time, few younger men seemed willing or able to take their place, not just at the grill but among fraternal organizations in general.

Maynard, a retired banker, said the crew fired up its final group barbecue a few years before Brownie's 1989 death.

The crew's pots and pans were later donated to area churches or put into storage. Its stainless steel racks that allowed for the turning of dozens of steaks at a time are tucked away on a ranch owned by the family of late crew member Glenn Stallings.

And yet, Brownie's Shrine BBQ Crew lives on. The proof is in the more than $10,000 the group — or, rather, its trust — continues to give each year to the Shriners Hospitals for Children in Los Angeles.

A whole new ballgame

The creation of his eponymous barbecue crew was not the first time that Raymond "Brownie" Brown used the grill to raise money.

According to newspaper accounts, the elder Brown was working at Rain's Shoe Co. in downtown Ventura when, as an appointed member of the California Athletic Commission, he staged a series of barbecues that raised $18,000.

That was enough to entice the New York Yankees to play several games in Ventura, paving the way for the creation of a local minor league in the 1940s.

By the time he started the Shrine crew, Brown had worked out the details of barbecuing for fun and charitable profit.

He usually brought a bottle of Scotch to share with his crewmates, for one thing. For another, he made a point of promoting local businesses.

The beans in the chili were always Las Palmas brand, processed in a Ventura factory. The crew also had an in-house butcher in Zane Sullender, a Shriner who cut the steaks to specification in his Ventura shop.

True, Brownie's crew charged a fee that barely covered the cost of ingredients and other materials, but it also accepted donations, and the groups it fed were more than generous. By 1985, the crew had taken in enough to have donated more than $150,000 to the Shriners Hospitals for Children.

The continuing legacy

That also was the year that the crew's remaining original members agreed to pledge an additional $250,000 to the hospital, to be paid in annual, $10,000 installments over 25 years — one for each man on the team.

In 1997, thanks to the interest rates of the day, the trust overseen by Warren Brown and James Stallings (who, like Brown, followed his father into the Shriners) also was able to start making annual donations to the California Masonic Foundation and other groups. (When the trust ends in 2010, its balance will be divided among each of these organizations.)

On a Wednesday morning last month, Maynard and Stallings held an informal meeting of what remains of the Ventura Shrine Club, now essentially disbanded, at Danny's Deli in Ventura. The purpose: accepting a plaque acknowledging the $40,500 given by the trust thus far to the Cryptic Masons Medical Research Foundation.

Maynard wore his grand master fez and blue barbecue-crew jumpsuit for the occasion.

"I miss the camaraderie most of all," he said of his days on the crew. "We were very close for so long, and now there's only five of us left.