Granddaughter of UM’s first president ‘taught me what it’s like to be a real Cane’ (2025)

Linda Dunn Brown learned early that she could do whatever she set her mind toward achieving.

Dunn Brown, who died of complications from cancer at 74 on April 20, once heard a prescient message from her father.

She took his confidence booster to a career in education where she taught at three Miami area elementary schools in the 1970s and ‘80s — Orchard Villa Elementary and Edison Park K-8 Center in Liberty City and Gloria Floyd Elementary in southwest Kendall. She then joined Miami-Dade County Public Schools, rising to a district and administration director for the office of Community Services until she and her husband retired in 2008.

She served as president of the Junior Orange Bowl in 2001 and the Junior League of Miami in 1992.

The societal mores of the 1950s when she was born to the daughter of the University of Miami’s first and longest serving president — Bowman Foster Ashe — were limiting for women.

But a young Linda Dunn, born in Coral Gables to Dorothy Ashe Dunn and Edward Dunn on March 20, 1951, reacted immediately to what her father Edward Dunn had said. He was an early football star with UM. Her brother Gary, who played on the Canes football team, won two Super Bowl rings as a defensive tackle with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1979 and 1980.

Linda Dunn Brown’s inspiration

Dunn Brown died in North Carolina where she lived in retirement with her husband, former Coral Gables City Manager David Brown. She didn’t have to look far for inspiration.

“I think it was a combination of being the middle child between two boys,” her husband said. “Her father told her, ‘Look, you’re not a ‘girl.’ You’re just as good as them. You can do anything they they do — and you can do it better.’ And she believed Eddie, that she could do anything, and she went out there. When they played ball, she played ball. When they played softball, she played softball. She was the athlete of the year at Ponce Junior High and so that gave her confidence and she never looked back.”

Dunn Brown told the Miami Herald in 2001 that she loved being a grade school teacher, usually leading fourth and fifth grade classrooms. But she wanted to “stretch” into administration, she said, and to take on volunteer opportunities.

So she helped establish Inn Transition, a battered women’s shelter in South Miami-Dade, after Hurricane Andrew devastated the area in August 1992.

Female empowerment

“I would like women to understand the power they have within themselves, which I think is immense, and the ability to use it for good,” Dunn Brown told the Herald about that endeavor in 2001 when she was honored as a Woman of Impact by the Women’s History Coalition.

That quote, nearly a quarter of a century ago, exemplified Dunn Brown’s nature, her friend Kathleen Slesnick Kauffman said.

“She lifted other women up. She wanted to see other women succeed,” said Slesnick Kauffman, a historic preservation officer in Gainesville.

Dunn Brown encouraged Slesnick Kauffman — daughter of former Coral Gables Mayor Don Slesnick and his late wife, Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick — to seek a consulting position in preservation that she had yearned to tackle outside of her home base in Miami. They both bonded during their times serving the Junior Orange Bowl and Junior League.

“She was one of the people that would talk to me about just being a strong woman and doing the things that you know you need to do for yourself. She was that kind of woman. I really looked up to her, her leadership skills. She was strong,” Slesnick Kauffman said.

Added Don Slesnick: “Linda was a positive force of nature, whether it was her impact as an administrator within the Miami-Dade County Public School system, her leadership as president of the Junior Orange Bowl, her presidency of the Junior League of Miami, or her loyal unwavering support for the University of Miami.”

A real Cane

UM Professor Susan Mullane has been on campus since late head swim coach Bill Diaz recruited her to the Hurricanes diving team in 1975. As one of UMiami’s — and the nation’s — first female scholarship athletes, the All-American diver has been a faculty member for 30 years. She’s retiring this semester from teaching sport administration, a program she founded and directed in the School of Education and Human Development’s Department of Kinesiology and Sport Sciences.

Mullane is one of several distinguished alumni set to deliver a spring commencement address to UM graduates on May 8. Dunn Brown’s influence, and her family’s, will figure prominently in Mullane’s speech to students, she said.

“When I came to the university from Louisville, Kentucky, I didn’t know anybody. I went through sorority rush, which is where I met Linda. She was like the third person I met on campus and we were lifelong friends after that. She is the reason I’m still here,” Mullane said.

Dunn Brown was unassuming, Mullane said. She didn’t flaunt her family’s connections to developing the University of Miami over the decades. “I had to learn later she was the granddaughter of the founder and first president, Bowman Ashe.”

The Dunns and Mullanes became blended families over the last 50 years, attending games and sharing life events.

“Linda taught me a lot about what it’s like to be a real Cane,” Mullane said. “She’s not just a friend, but a mentor.”

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University of Miami family ties

In addition to Edward Dunn, who saw that early promise in his daughter, Dunn Brown had other examples. Her grandfather, of course. Though Ashe died when she was a year old, he served as UM president from the day its doors opened in 1926 soon after it was established 100 years ago until his death in 1952. The patriarch set the family’s path on lives devoted to education. His daughter Dorothy, her mother, was an economics professor at Miami Dade College and earned her doctorate in her 60s.

Dunn Brown graduated with two degrees in education from UM, a bachelor’s in 1973 and master’s in 1977, and she served as vice president for the UM National Alumni Association in 2005-2006. She earned her doctorate in education at Nova Southeastern University in 2002.

She was honored by UM with its highest honor, the Iron Arrow in 2005, following her mother Dorothy who was the first woman tapped as a UM Iron Arrow recipient in 1985 when women were first admitted to the all-male society founded by Ashe in 1926.

“Their family tradition revolved around the university,” Dunn Brown’s husband, David, said. “You talk about people they say bleed orange and green, Dorothy, Eddie and Linda and [her brothers] Gary and Bowman all bled orange and green because they were raised in, and they never got out of, the university setting or the atmosphere of the university ... in its first 100 years of life.”

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The couple met in November 1978 on a train from Hialeah to Gainesville for the UM-Florida game, soon after David Brown had tapped her brother Gary into Iron Arrow. “I said, ‘How’s your brother?’ And she goes, ‘Who are you?’ Whoops. I guess that line didn’t work.”

Brown forgot to get her phone number after the weekend game. But he remembered she was teaching at Edison.

“I called every school in the book until I found Edison Park Elementary and gave the lady my phone number and name,” Brown said.

She got his message. She called. The couple were together ever since.

In retirement, the couple worked with animal rescue. Dunn Brown loved her dogs and ponies.

Her career as a teacher worked well, Brown believed, because of her core traits.

“She had patience. She had the ability to explain and show different points of view, but I’ll tell you what topped it off. She had a determination and a drive that if you gave her a project or she had a task there was nothing, nothing gonna get in her way of achieving that task,” Brown said. “She had an ability to connect with people. She did everything with grace and dignity. Everything. When she smiled, people caught it. They knew that smile.”

Survivors and services

Linda Dunn Brown is survived by her husband, David; two brothers, Bowman Ashe Dunn and Gary Edward Dunn; nieces and nephews.

A celebration of her life will be held at a later date in North Carolina.

Memorials to honor Linda Dunn Brown may be made to the University of Miami, Division of Development and Alumni Relations, P.O. Box 025388, Coral Gables, Florida, 33102.

This story was originally published April 29, 2025 at 1:02 PM.