
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, October 4, 1994                   TAG: 9410050057
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

OLYMPIAN FROM ROANOKE DIES AT 101

Nellie Carlton Brown, a Roanoke native who swam her way into the Senior Olympics and even to the White House, died Saturday of cardiac arrest in an Alexandria retirement home. She was 101.

Brown was born in Roanoke on July 24, 1893. She moved to Alexandria with her husband, William Brown, in 1921, after teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in Bent Mountain for a while.

She was a competitive swimmer on the D.C. Masters Swim Team in the 80- and 90-year-old brackets. Despite a childhood bout with polio that left one of her legs shorter than the other, she earned three gold medals in the Senior Olympics, received the 1976 Sports Illustrated Award of Merit and was named to the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

Brown once swam in the White House pool with President Gerald Ford, who later named her to his Committee for the Aged.

She retired from teaching first grade when she was 77, after 40 years in the Alexandria school system.

by CNB