We are saddened to report the passing of Maggie Brown, Friends of the San Dieguito River Valley president, on June 29, 2025. She was 82.

Maggie, a member of the Royal family, was born in Shreveport, Louisiana on September 18, 1942, to Marion and Eric H. Royal, the eldest of their two children. Her younger brother, Eric (Ricky) Royal, Jr. was killed in a train-car crash in 1968.

Her father worked for International Harvester and moved the family around the country at least a dozen times during Maggie’s childhood. The Royals eventually settled in Texarkana, Arkansas where Maggie graduated from Arkansas High School in the class of 1958. Not surprisingly, Maggie was active in numerous school clubs – the Latin Club, Library Club, Student Education Association, Americanism Club, Allied Youth, Feature Editor, Homecoming Maid, Junior-Senior Prom Committee, as well as the school’s Quill and Scroll literary magazine.

She went on to receive her Bachelor of Science degree in Art Education from the State University College of New York at Buffalo, and her Master’s in Art Education from the University of Cincinnati. Maggie was later certified to teach English as a Second/Foreign Language.

After a stint teaching high school art in Cincinnati in the late 1960s, Maggie moved to San Diego where her educational career diverged into mortgage banking, real estate development, sales & marketing, and design. “Uptown” Maggie Brown was honored as Person of the Year in 1996 by the Del Mar Chamber of Commerce for her tireless work in the community. Even in retirement she returned to her first love of teaching by working with struggling early readers at the Paul Ecke Elementary School in Encinitas.

A dedicated environmental steward since the early 1980s, Maggie joined the FSDRV board in 1999 and served as president from 2013 until her recent passing, working assiduously by way of legal battles and increasing public awareness, to preserve and protect the river valley. Her dedication was also evident in her perfect attendance at meetings of regional governmental agencies, conservation groups, and of course, the Friends. Her advocacy and spirit were admired by all; her positive presence will be sorely missed.

Her marriages to William Lamar Herrin and Thomas F. Brown, Jr. ended in divorce. There were no children and no immediate survivors.

Maggie often told people she lived by a principle imparted by her mother, an English teacher, who was fond of quoting Shakespeare when Maggie would come whining and crying to her about something. “This above all: To thine own self be true. Then it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”