Local educator Brownlee dies at 75

He was tarred and feathered in '71 racial incident that made national headlines

R. Wiley Brownlee traveled many paths in his long and colorful life: He worked as a teacher in Newfoundland and as a principal in Spain; he was an administrator in France and served as the second dean of Community High School in Ann Arbor. A pilot since he was 16, he started skydiving when he turned 60.
But Brownlee was best known for the spring night in 1971 when hooded men tarred and feathered him at gunpoint after he left a Willow Run School District board meeting. The incident attracted national attention and hung over the school district like a dark cloud.
Brownlee, known as a warm-hearted man passionate about civil rights and life itself, died Jan. 1 after a brief illness. He was 75.
"Wiley was the only guy I ever knew who was tarred and feathered," said Burt Lamkin, a former Ann Arbor schools principal who reported to Brownlee when he was an Ann Arbor schools central office administrator. Lamkin said Brownlee always tried to do the right thing.
"He looked for doing the right thing, the most colorful example being that he was tarred and feathered when he was working for equal rights in Willow Run."
Willow Run High School had been rife with racial tensions while Brownlee was principal there in the early 1970s, and Brownlee had worked to improve race relations. This made some white families unhappy.
As he headed home after a school board meeting April 1, 1971, Brownlee was forced off of Napier Road, near Cherry Hill Road. A small band of men poured cold tar on him below the shoulders and covered him with feathers before leaving him alone on the dark stretch of road.
Four men, including Robert E. Miles, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Michigan, were eventually sentenced to prison for the act.
But Brownlee was never bitter about the incident, said his widow, Phyllis, who was a Willow Run High School teacher at the time. He was back at work the next morning.
"He was fairly philosophical about it," Lamkin said. "He knew that there are evil people out there."
He left Willow Run for Community High School in 1973. He was innovative and open to new ideas, Lamkin said. He later became a deputy superintendent for the district. He retired in 1987.
But that wasn't the end of Brownlee's adventures. Soon after retirement, he took up sky diving, making some 2,000 jumps. "He loved the feeling of being free," said Phyllis Brownlee. "It was so invigorating to him. That was his style."
A funeral service for Brownlee will be 2:30 p.m. Jan. 17 at the First Unitarian Universalist Church, 4001 Ann Arbor-Saline Road.
Janet Miller can be reached at jmiller@annarbornews.com or (734) 994-6827.