Brewer remembered as the face of Brookville H.S.

During his long tenure as principal, Paul Brewer stretched the boundaries of Brookville High School to enfold an entire community. He also stretched many of the teachers, administrators and students who crossed his path.

“He would see things in you that you couldn’t see,” said John Vasvary, a track and football coach and athletic director under Brewer, who died Monday at the age of 81. “It was a magical gift that he had.”

Perhaps it was no accident, then, that the school produced a number of nationally known graduates under Brewer’s reign (1969-1990), including country singer Phil Vassar and Biddie Martin, now chancellor of the University of Wisconsin.

And Dan Neal, Class of 1970, who became an attorney in Venice, Calif.

“In a matter of only a few years,” Neal wrote in an e-mail, “Brookville went from a small country school to the heart of a growing suburban community filled with newcomers from all over the United States. Mr. Brewer was the face of Brookville in those days and he united students, faculty and parents in the change from the old Brookville to the new. He seemed to shepherd the community in that transition.”

The community, in turn, embraced the school.

“Paul used to say that if Brookville High School really needed money for a project, he could call the different businesses up and down Timberlake Road and raise $10,000 in a day,” said George Nolley, who retired last year as Campbell County’s Superintendent of Schools. “Of course, that was back when most of them were local businesses.”

To Nolley, one of Brewer’s greatest accomplishments was maintaining local pride in Brookville High School after the 1976 annexation took a bite out of the school’s enrollment and territory.

“If you look at the school itself, it’s nothing special,” Nolley said. “This was a good example that what really makes a school is the people inside it.”

Vasvary was at William Campbell High School in Gladys when he encountered Brewer sitting in the hospitality room at a high school tournament, smoking a cigar.

“I told him I’d heard that they’d hired so-and-so to coach football,” Vasvary remembered, “and that I thought he’d do a good job.

“Paul took the cigar out of his mouth and said, ‘He will, if you don’t take it (the job).’”

Vasvary did, and then went on to coach track at the University of Virginia and the University of Pittsburgh.

Another track coach, Ed Nuttycombe, had only been at Brookville three months when he was offered a job at the University of Wisconsin.

“He told me he was really scared about telling Paul,” Vasvary said, “but Paul told him, ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.’ And he was smiling when he said it.”

Just another example, said Vasvary, of Brewer’s ability to “see the big picture.”

He pushed Jim (Whorley, Brewer’s successor, who drowned on a duck hunting trip last year) and me to get our master’s degrees,” Vasvary said. “With teachers, he let them take their classes and run with them.”

With students, he was both formidable and approachable.

Recalled Brookville grad Linda Brown: “I did not know him personally (I guess that means I was never hauled into the office), but I looked up to him. Somehow, he made me feel safe and secure in the big world of high school. He was a great father figure for a lot of us. Of course, the other part of me was scared to death of him.”

“He said two things that stuck with us,” Murrell “Flip” Phillips said. “Don’t ever give up on your children because not all of their brains develop and mature at the same time.

“And don’t let them buy a car.”

A service to celebrate Paul Brewer’s life will be held this afternoon at 1 p.m. at Timberlake United Methodist Church.