‘A voice for the voiceless.’ Trailblazing Charlotte Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown has died
Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown, a trailblazing physician, minister, author and community leader, died Wednesday, according to Novant Health.
The Novant Health doctor — Charlotte’s first female African-American family medicine resident — had been treated for cancer for years since 2012, according to the hospital system. Garmon-Brown was in her mid-60s.
Garmon-Brown had served many roles in the Charlotte community, including co-founder of Charlotte Community Health Clinic, a free clinic for uninsured patients.
Nancy Hudson, who served as director of the free health clinic until 2016, said Garmon-Brown was “a champion” for the clinic, and for people without a voice in the community. Hudson knew Garmon-Brown for more than 30 years, she told the Observer Thursday.
“I feel more lonely,” Hudson said. “I think I feel lonely because there needs to be more people like her.
Garmon-Brown also served on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Leading on Opportunity Council, created after a study ranked Charlotte last among 50 U.S. cities in upward mobility.
Garmon-Brown moved to Charlotte in 1980, according to the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance.
“She is mourned by a community that she left better than she found it,” Novant Health said in a statement. “Dr. Garmon-Brown was a voice for the voiceless and a tireless advocate for what is just and right.”
Citizen of the Carolinas
Last year, Garmon-Brown was named 2020 Citizen of the Carolinas by the business alliance.
“Dr. Garmon-Brown’s work is lifting up people in our region and making our broader community better,” CLT Alliance Chairman of the Board Jennifer Weber said in a statement at the time. “We are in awe of and grateful for her dedication to the health and economic success of all our neighbors.”
Garmon-Brown also served on the Queens University of Charlotte Board of Trustees from 2011 to 2019.
In 2018, Garmon-Brown was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest honor a civilian can receive from the state of North Carolina. “As a physician, minister, volunteer, advocate, community leader — she embodies the spirit of giving and caring for others,” Novant Health CEO Carl Armato said in a statement in 2018.
Funeral arrangements and services for Garmon-Brown were not immediately announced.
‘I am a blessed person’
Garmon-Brown wrote a book, released last year, about her journey with cancer, telling her story and the stories of other survivors: “The Unexpected Gift: Profiles in Courage from Cancer Survivorship.”
She wanted to use the book to help “people who have had this devastating diagnosis placed upon them … to find some hope in it, somewhere,” Garmon-Brown said in a Novant Health profile last year.
All proceeds from book sales went to the Novant Health Foundation, the hospital system’s philanthropic organization.
Garmon-Brown’s latest bout with cancer was discovered in 2016 after a fall at home led to an MRI scan, she told the Observer at the time. Doctors found a brain tumor along with cancer in her right kidney.
“I look at myself in the mirror each day and say, ‘You had brain surgery. You had your right kidney removed,’” she told the Observer in 2016. “I just marvel. I’m overwhelmed, and I’m grateful.”
Despite her illness, Garmon-Brown returned to work in early 2017, the Observer reported.
“I am a blessed person,” she said at the time. “I don’t fear cancer. I have faith. (And) I have health care. I am a person that doesn’t have to worry about when I need my next MRI scan... When one does not have access to health care, what can one hope for?”
Community leadership
In 2016, when doctors discovered the cancer in Garmon-Brown’s brain and kidney, she was serving as co-chair of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Opportunity Task Force.
The task force was formed in early 2015. After she returned to work in 2017, Garmon-Brown gave a 30-minute talk at that year’s annual YWCA Central Carolinas fund-raising luncheon, touching on the task force’s work, the Observer reported at the time.
Over two years, she said, the task force uncovered data that revealed “a tale of two cities.... a tale of two children that because of the ZIP codes they were raised in, life was quite different,” Garmon-Brown said. Sometimes, she said, it “made us feel like it was almost impossible for us to get to a place where we needed to be in this community to make a difference.”
The task force recommended action in at least six areas: early childhood development and education, family stability, impacts of segregation, college and career readiness, social capital, and family formation and structure.
“If we could do these right in our community,” she said in 2017, “we could have a different place. We could have a place where Charlotte-Mecklenburg could hold its head up and keep its back straight and know it is a place where all people could succeed.”
Blessed to have her in our midst’
Throughout her time in Charlotte, Garmon-Brown served as an ordained Baptist minister and member at several area churches, including Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, Myers Park Baptist Church and St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church.
“The Charlotte community and Friendship Missionary Baptist Church are bettered because we were blessed to have Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown in our midst,” Friendship Missionary Senior Minister Clifford Jones Sr. said in a statement to the Observer. “She will be missed immensely.”
She was ordained at Myers Park Baptist in 2012, according to the church. And some of her sermons are still available online through the church, including where she talked about her cancer surgeries and confronting truth.
“I reflect on the grace and mercies of God, not on just my life but on the lives of all of us. … There is a song that I have grown fond of,” she shared in her sermon. “It is called ‘Made a Way.’
“’Don’t know how he did it, but made a way,’” she quoted from the song. “And I believe that and I am grateful for God in that.”
This story was originally published November 18, 2021 at 9:43 AM.
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