D. Theodore Brownworth, ad executive, activist

Posted 6/7/11

D. Theodore Brownworth, 79, of Chestnut Hill, a retired advertising executive and civil rights activist, died May 22 of complications of a stroke at the Chestnut Hill Lodge Health and Rehabilitation …

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D. Theodore Brownworth, ad executive, activist

Posted

D. Theodore Brownworth, 79, of Chestnut Hill, a retired advertising executive and civil rights activist, died May 22 of complications of a stroke at the Chestnut Hill Lodge Health and Rehabilitation Center in Wyndmoor.

Mr. Brownworth had been vice president for advertising for the Philadelphia office of Big Brothers Big Sisters. Earlier he had been vice president for advertising at Lincoln and First Pennsylvania banks. In the 1960s he had been marketing director at N.W. Ayer & Son, the Philadelphia advertising firm, and later became a senior account executive there.

Mr. Brownworth and his wife, Elizabeth, had been active in the Philadelphia to Philadelphia Project, a program established in 1965 by the Unitarian-Universalist congregation in East Mt. Airy after three civil rights workers had been murdered near Philadelphia, Miss., a year earlier. The project brought African-American teenagers from Mississippi to spend the summer in the Philadelphia area.

Mr. Brownworth also was a member and organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Socialist Workers Party.

Born in East Falls, he received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and served in the Navy.

He is survived by daughters Victoria Brownworth and Jennie Goldenberg; three grandchildren, and his partner, Meredith Kane. His former wife, Elizabeth, died in 2004.

A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 11, at St. Mark’s Church, 1625 Locust St., in Philadelphia. – WF

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