RIP Officer Brownelle Lee
Officer Brownelle Lee, a 22-year veteran of the Chester Police Department, died on March 21. Photo: Karla Beaver
The day after the two boys were shot and killed playing basketball on Broomall street a couple weeks ago, I was sitting on my front porch chillin. The phone rang. It was Brownelle. The first thing out her mouth was, “Why you sittin on the porch like that? You think you’re bulletproof?”
We had so many laughs in the dozen or so years we were friends.
I was at CVS in Brookhaven and she drove by with a car full of people with the window down, talking loud like she did. I texted her, telling her to slow down or I’d call the cops. She replied, “I’m sorry.” That was our last contact.
Everything about our time together was a barrel of laughs. We met at one of Master Blaster’s community events on 11th Street on the East Side of Chester. I kept hearing someone call my name but couldn’t determine who it was. Finally, I saw it was her, in her police uniform, and she was actually calling her son who has the same name as me. I told her if she kept calling my name like that she was going to have to take me home. She had some smart ass reply, and after that we were always friends.
There were periods we talked or texted every day. She got so mad that her long text messages were answered with my short replies, she asked what was wrong with me. I told her I didn’t like texting because it was hard to text on my flip phone, having to hit the numbers to make the letters. Next thing I knew, she’d bought me my first iPhone.
When I wrote my book, “Toxic Man – The Melvin Wade Story,” which explores whether a Chester millionaire became the fall guy for the corporations that sent toxic waste to his rubber reclamation factory — I got hate mail and death threats. People were not happy I was bringing Melvin Wade back up. When a couple of survivors of the toxic fire at his storage facility and some of their family members asked to meet with me, big bad me said okay. But I ain’t no dummy, and I was not going alone. I gathered up my Dad and Brownelle, because I knew she always carried that gun in her purse.
I had a friend over one night, and she forgot to lock her car, and someone broke in and stole some stuff. When I called Brownelle, she came right over. She said it was probably a guy just got out of jail in the neighborhood. Within two minutes, she found my friend’s pouch, with all his important papers, although the money was gone.
Just last year, I learned she had a fire in her house. The insurance company had her family split up between two hotel rooms in Springfield while they tried to find her a house. My rental had been destroyed by a tenant I had finally managed to evict, and I was fixing it back up. I vowed I’d never rent again, especially to anyone with a large family. But this was Brownelle.
I’m going to miss her so much.
