Joseph Erin Brown

Joseph Erin Brown, 16, of Robinson, IL, passed away unexpectedly on August 6, 2026, at Crawford Memorial Hospital in Robinson. He was born on December 11, 2009, in Vancouver, British Columbia, and came to Illinois when he was just nine months old. He'd come for a visit and never left, though he was always proud of his dual citizenship and of that little piece of himself that started somewhere else. So he grew up here in Robinson, a Canadian kid turned Crawford County boy, and from the time he was small, he was pure motion. When he was little, he'd run through the house with his legs kicking out sideways, everybody cheering him on, "Go, crazy legs!"

That energy never really switched off, so the people who loved him found ways to let it run. He'd "River Dance" for his Papaw Mark every night he stayed over, kicking those legs out just like the crazy-legs days. At Grandpa Kenny's, he was always getting into trouble, and Kenny would make him run laps around the house until he'd burned some of it off. His Memaw Reba took the gentler route, hauling him to the bouncy house in Robinson to bounce it out, and she loved taking him out into the world besides, to different restaurants and different parks, wherever the two of them felt like going. Memaw was the one whose mac and cheese he'd ask for by name, and there wasn't a version anywhere that beat hers. He had a way of collecting these small rituals with the people who loved him, one for each of them. He was the "Little Horse Whisperer" at Papaw and Mamaw's, tending their horses and cashing in on a back scratch every night before bed. He fed the squirrels with Pepaw Larry and kept at it until he'd coaxed one to eat right out of his hand! Every grandparent got a different Joe, and every one of them got the best of him.

So yes, he was happiest in motion, and a lot of that motion happened in a vehicle of one kind or another. As a kid, he was the epitome of a "backseat driver," calling every turn—"turn right, turn left"—just for the joy of the journey. Back home, he loved ripping his dirt bike around the property, and he and his sister wore out Herbie the yard cart, riding it all over the place for hours on end. When they were older, it became country cruising, windows down and their favorite songs playing, and he took that same easy joy out with his friends, drifting through the streets with no place to be. The skateboard and scooter were always close by, and he could ride for hours at a time. He was just as happy with a big stick in his hands, one he'd taught himself to spin like a baton, walking the yard and twirling it around like a ninja, and the poi balls came the same way. Whatever it was, he'd keep after it until it looked easy.

Even his toys had to move. He was crazy about remote-controlled cars, though in his hands they had a short life expectancy, sometimes only minutes. He unwrapped a nice one once, went to race it, wasn't paying attention, and stepped right on it, and he was so mad he tried to get his money back out of his parents. Then there were the Nerf guns, and he must have had every model ever made, a whole armory of them. All that firepower had a purpose, because Joe was a zombie hunter. It started with an X-Box game and spilled straight out into the yard, where he'd go out and fight off the undead single-handed, big stick in hand for the ones that got close. The obsession ran deep enough that he had the shirt to prove it, "Joe the Zombie Hunter," worn like a badge.

His aim went real before long, too. Archery was one of his early loves, right alongside baseball and soccer, and at Archery Club one day, he "Robin Hooded" another arrow, driving his own shot straight through the shaft of one already in the target! It happened to land on his birthday, which made it feel like a gift he'd given himself. Fishing was another of his loves, and he had a favorite spot for it, the one he called his "Papaw's Lake." He'd fish for hours there, and he'd handle his mom's line too, getting her fish off the hook for her. All this fishing took on a secondary purpose, since there were eagles around the property. They would catch fish and set them out and watch for the eagles to swoop in and carry them off.

Papaw Mark was also the one who fed his sense of adventure at the table. With Papaw, he'd eat beef tongue and beef heart, and beyond that, he'd take on just about anything—rabbit, squirrel—you name it. He could put away a mega-jar of whole dill pickles and drink the juice besides, all in one go, and sardines were a genuine favorite. There wasn't much Joe wouldn't put on his plate. That fearlessness didn't stop at the plate. He'd pick up any snake he laid eyes on and hold onto it even if it bit him, because Joe loved reptiles and animals through and through. His own little menagerie said as much: a cat named Freya, a leopard gecko named Shadow, a new salamander he hadn't named yet, and two dogs, Rogue and Lilah. Rogue was his, a birthday dog he was quick to remind everyone belonged to him and him alone.

His taste in music ran just as wide as his taste in animals. He loved all of it—every genre he could get his hands on—and some genuinely strange stuff besides, the kind of thing where you'd catch reggae blended into ICP (though for the record, he didn't care for ICP). Metal, rap, a bit of rock, it all found a place with him. His Mudder, Grandma Angie, handed down the backbone of it, her 70s and 80s classic rock becoming his own. But it was never enough for Joe to merely listen. He loved to sing, and knew every word to more songs than seemed possible. But the one he loved to sing above all was Just the Two of Us. That was his song. And he didn't stop at his own voice, either. At thirteen, he taught himself the drums, and these weren't simple beats, mind you. He worked his way into some genuinely technical parts, Billie Jean among his favorites, and with some Foo Fighters thrown into the mix too. He'd just started in on the guitar, too, with Smoke on the Water already under his belt, one more thing he was teaching himself from scratch.

Teaching himself from scratch was sort of his whole way of being, and nowhere more than at his computer. He'd spend hours and hours coding—genuinely lost in it—and he'd set his sights on software engineering as the thing he wanted to do as a career. He could live at that PC around the clock, honestly, up all night without a second thought. Plenty of those hours were for gaming, which for him started with Fortnite and grew into Roblox and Sea of Thieves. All that time at the keyboard was really just his mind looking for somewhere to go. Joe was sharp, a genuine out-of-the-box thinker who was forever finding a better way to do a thing. He and Mudder would get to working on something, and she'd do it backwards—in his estimation, anyway—and he'd step in with a fix: "work smarter, not harder." That was Joe, forever certain he'd found the better angle. That certainty was both a gift and a burden. He could genuinely do anything he wanted to, and he knew a staggering number of odd, interesting things—animal facts above all—alongside a curiosity about science, history, and how other people and cultures lived. But he could also be too smart for his own good. As he got older, it got harder to tell him anything at all because he'd already made up his mind he knew the better way.

For all that, you couldn't help but love being around him. Joe had no filter, and when we say no filter, we mean it! He was unafraid to say whatever was on his mind the second it landed there. He was gifted with voices and accents, too, and if you'd managed to make him mad, he'd curse you out in a flawless British accent. You never quite knew what was coming, and that was most of the fun. His stories were the best proof of it. Joe loved to tell them, and nobody could ever sort out which parts were true, because he'd say the most shocking thing with a perfectly straight face, just to watch you react. He once told his Uncle Jimmy that a bear had attacked him and that he'd killed it. While that was certainly untrue, the kicker is that his family learned, again and again, that many of the stories that sounded like pure invention actually happened! He had a shirt as a kid that summed him up: "If you're surprised by what's coming out of my mouth, you obviously don't know me very well."

That shirt wasn't wrong. Joe was a jokester through and through, forever into some shenanigan or other, and you truly never knew what he was going to do next. Some of it left a mark, in the literal sense, because he took to graffiti and has art up all over town to this day. Say what you want about it, but it's an art form, after all, and he had the eye for it. Somewhere in the last couple of years, his childhood shenanigans took on a harder edge. He wasn't scared of anyone, and that fearlessness kept landing him crossways with the authorities.

But getting into trouble and being a bad kid are two different things, and Joe was never the second one. He was good, all the way down, and nobody who loved him ever doubted it. The proof was in how he treated people. He put on the big-tough-guy act, but underneath it he had the biggest heart anyone knew, generous to a fault and always trying to be there for his friends. He'd hand out advice whether he had any business to or not, and when you needed him, he was there, no questions asked. His mom called him her "therapy dog" and would take him along to Walmart just for the company. And that was the heart of him in the end, a boy whose whole aim was to leave people lighter than he found them, however much pain he might have been carrying himself. That was Joe. A light to everyone who knew him, and the people who loved him will carry a little of that light for the rest of their lives.

Joe is survived by his parents, Andy & Tia Brown; his sister, Mazie Brown, and her boyfriend, Jacob Shick; his great-grandparents, Reba Holtzman, Larry Newcomb, and Cindy Haines; his grandparents, Angie Newcomb & Kenny Douglas, Michelle Brown, and Linda Myers; several aunts and uncles; his cousins, Tyler Riggle, Mayven Riggle, Bryer Dunlap, Jaycee Montgomery, Brody Repking, and Lucy Repking; and three special friends, Gavin Ralston, McKenzie Hayes, and Lainey Krause. He was preceded in death by his great-grandfather, Bill Holtzman; his Papaw, Mark Brown; his uncle, Chad Brown; and his cousins, AJ Boyer and Emily Boyer.

A time of visitation will be held from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 29th, at the Goodwine Funeral Home in Robinson. A celebration of his life will immediately follow at 2:00 p.m. with Celebrant Curt Goodwine officiating. For those unable to attend, a live stream of the service will be available at www.goodwinefuneralhomes.com/live-stream/live-stream. Memorials may be made to his memorial fund, with checks made payable to "Goodwine Funeral Homes". Memorials may also be made online at www.goodwinefuneralhomes.com/payments.