Whether digging for treasure, setting off rockets and potato cannons, or exotic fishing adventures, Rodney “Hot Rod” Spaulding Brown left behind no shortage of compelling stories and fond memories. Or hobbies, for that matter.
Rod Brown’s friends and family gathered at the Nolan Center on July 25 to honor the beloved former teacher who passed away in September of 2025, at the age of 82.
A few days after the memorial, a commemorative wooden bench was placed in the entrance of the swimming pool and recreation facility, where Brown spent much of his time in his later years.
The bench, made by friend and fellow former teacher Dave Brown, sits in the same spot where Rod would sit on a folding chair — labeled “Hot Rod’s Chair” by the facility staff — as he waited to be picked up after his workouts.
The wood used to make the bench was donated by Mike Allen.
Brown came to Alaska in the mid-1960s to study wildlife management at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he met his wife Jean, a fellow Minnesotan who was there studying to be a teacher.
The couple married in 1968, and Brown decided to switch to a teaching degree as well. They welcomed their first child shortly thereafter.
“We were young and grew up a lot together because, you know, young, foolish, no money, nothing,” Jean Brown said.
The pair found teaching positions in Wrangell, where Jean worked as an elementary school teacher and Rod became something of a Swiss Army knife at the high school; teaching biology, marine biology and photography, along with anything else they needed over the decades.
A man of many interests, he collected hobbies the same way he seemed to collect people.
“He was very talented in many, many, many areas,” Jean said, “but he would do things once and say, ‘OK, I’ve done that’ and then want to go on to something else.”
His home of 56 years is still filled to the brim with the evidence of his interests. Basket weaving, photography, railroad pocket watches, books on aquatic invertebrates and model airplanes. At one point he even kept carrier pigeons that he used to send notes to fellow bird keepers or home when he traveled off Wrangell Island.
“Sometimes when we go on a basketball trip on the ferry we’d take a pigeon with us and put a little note in its little leg band carrier and let it go,” said his oldest son, Miles. “Then when we came back, it’s like, did the pigeon get back before we did?”
He was also well known for his love of collecting glass bottles excavated from antique trash piles. Some of the old glass milk bottles he found still decorate their home.
Another fellow teacher, Haig Demerjian, recalled Brown coming over to visit his home when he first moved to Wrangell. The property had an embankment down to the water and Brown told Demerjian he thought there might be stuff worth digging for down there.
“He said, ‘Boy, that hill there is where they used to probably throw garbage,’ … and just went down there digging,” said Demerjian. “He found old bottles and whatever else, which I thought was interesting. I could really not care a lot about old bottles, but he did.”
Aside from Brown’s patient demeanor, what his students likely remember him for the most is the collection of animals he kept in his classroom.
As a biology teacher with an interest in wildlife, in a town that had no veterinarian at the time, Jean said that many of the animals found their way into Rod’s classroom.
There were snakes, an owl named Agnes, Betty the lizard and a Venus flytrap, among others. With these animals also came their food: rats, mice and crickets that sometimes went on adventures of their own, according to Mayor Patty Gilbert, who taught in the neighboring classroom at the time.
Their two classrooms shared a storage room, providing a convenient escape for a mouse looking to avoid being one of the snake’s next meals.
“One time I opened up my desk drawer to get something to help a student and a mouse, a little mouse, bounded out, I swear, three feet straight up,” Gilbert said, “And I caught it in midair with one hand.”
The animals also provided a unique opportunity to keep the kids in line. Ask any one of his former students about the Rat Fancier’s Club, and you’re certain to get a reaction.
“I was screwing off. Some kid was walking across the classroom, and I stomped on the back of his foot and gave him a flat tire,” said Brian Merritt, a former student of Brown’s. “Rod saw: ‘That’s detention.’”
Merritt spent the afternoon cleaning out poop and replacing the sawdust that lined the bottom of the rat cages. “I never got in trouble again in his class for some reason after that.”
Rod was known to adopt animals and people alike.
Jean shared a story about her husband and their friend Butch Schmidt showing up at the house with a little black and white kitten — who they named Wallace after Butch’s given name — just days before the two were leaving to go on a river trip. Rod tried to convince his wife that it was a chance for her to bond with the new arrival. Then off he went, only to return on a Sunday, days later, with five Czechoslovakians he had met while on the river and invited home for dinner.
She said that they thankfully had enough hamburger meat in the freezer, since all the stores were closed.
“It was a good life,” Jean said.
If you have memories of Rod that you would like to share with the Brown family or stories about having either Rod or Jean as a teacher, you can submit them to their sons Miles and Jeff at rodandjeanbrown@gmail.com.
