Rappahannock was very much home to Capt. David M.

Rappahannock was very much home to Capt. David M. Brown who flew its skies, hiked Mary’s Rock, hiked along Skyline Drive and hand glided in the Shenandoah National Park.

It too has been home to his parents who retired here in 1986 but who had connections before that to the county.

“I courted my wife here,” recalled retired Arlington Circuit Court Judge Paul Brown, explaining it was back when his own father had a vacation house he rented from the government for $5 a month on Resettlement Road. He and his girlfriend would visit on holidays. The girlfriend is his wife of 54 years.

The last time David Brown, astronaut, flew as David Brown, son, was a few months ago when he brought his iMac computer along for the trip home to Rappahannock County and gave it to his parents. He wanted to be able to email them from space.

It is that computer sitting next to the fireplace in the family’s living room that received an email from Brown in space last Friday, the day before space shuttle Columbia exploded over Tfexas on Feb. 1.

It was the last communication from their son. In it, Capt. Brown spoke of the beauty of earth as a planet yet he seemed vexed that anything that beautiful could “harbor” bad things.

When his mother holds the email in her hands and reads it to visitors, it is as though she is reading it for the first time, still looking for something she hadn’t seen before, maybe some meaning that could soften the tragedy.

“We grieve.. ,he went out in a blaze of glory, doing what he wanted to do,” said Judge Brown, who served on the bench for more than 35 years.

Judge Brown, 83, and his wife, 77, live in retirement in a brick house with sweeping panoramic views some 1,350 feet up a picturesque country road.

The Browns spoke with pride about their son in the interview in their living room. Judge Brown, who is wheelchair