Meet Your Neighbor
Bill Brown
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER
It would be easy to mistake Bill Brown for a government employee since he spends as many hours in the town building as anyone on the payroll. Except for a lunch break, Brown can be found mornings and afternoons Monday through Friday at the Registry of Deeds where for nearly 20 years he has worked conducting title searches.

Depending on various components, such as the number of owners involved with the history of a property, it can take up to 12 hours to complete a title examination with most averaging six or seven hours to finish. That makes it necessary for Brown to put in whole days at the registry, but when he is not poring over land documents, he is often seen walking around town because he does not own a car.

"That's one of the benefits of Nantucket," Brown said. "I walk a lot for health and sanity, and I hate the telephone. When I practiced law the phone was always ringing."

Brown was born in Springfield, Mass. His family lived in several different towns in the state because of his father's work with a cardboard box company owned by his father's uncle. After Brown graduated from high school in Orleans he spent a year and a-half studying history at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He then took a leave of absence from there because he was a bit overwhelmed by cultural changes.

"I felt like a farm boy in la-la land," he said of being in the California city.

Brown returned to college at Clark University in Worcester and graduated with a major in history in 1974. In 1978 he was accepted at Suffolk University Law School, joined the Massachusetts Bar Association in 1981 and in 1986 went to work for the Orleans law firm of Latanzi, Spaulding and Landreth. Brown was living in Truro and was an associate with the firm when its principals decided to open a branch office on Nantucket and assigned Brown to run the operation. Though his specialty was real estate law, Brown also handled some criminal cases. By the end of 1988, he and colleagues at the firm experienced differences of opinion. Brown quit and the island office closed the following year. Brown stayed on Nantucket and practiced real estate law on his own, but business took a downturn during the late 1980s and early 1990s when the real estate market crashed and many properties went into foreclosure.

"Since I didn't come from money and I didn't have any angels I couldn't sustain it," he said. "I concentrated on doing land title research for attorneys and acting on occasions as a title examiner for the Land Court. I stayed with that work. It's enabled me to stay here. I keep hope that someday I may win the lottery and open my own office again."

Brown said he enjoys his searches because examining a full title from scratch is similar to putting together a puzzle. He also loves to read about current events, and calls himself "sort of a news junkie." While he is content with his lifestyle and fulfilled in his work, he would like to travel more to visit historical places as well as see more of his mother on the Cape.

"I just take things as they come," he said. "I don't think I could ever return to the mainland. It's just nice to walk down the street and stop and talk to people."

In spite of his dislike of the telephone Brown does have one, though he uses it primarily to contact his daughters. He keeps the number unpublished. His children Emily and Molly both attended Nantucket schools. Emily has been in Buenos Aires for three years managing a branch office of a company specializing in translating various documents, magazine articles and contracts. Molly is entering her second year at Plymouth State College where she is studying liberal arts and is interested

in environmental preservation. I You read about islanders who are in the public eye all the time, but what do you know about your neighbors - those you see at the supermarket, the gas station, at school or just in passing on the street? Everybody has a story about how they came to be here, what they have done and how their experiences have shaped and perhaps changed their lives and added to the fabric of Nantucket's unique character.

This week The Nantucket Independent continues a new feature highlighting island residents.