Jon’Tavese Brown

Community pillar, father Age: 21

Jon’Tavese Brown “poured himself into other people.” That’s how LaKeisha Barron-Brown describes her late son, who died of COVID-19 on Oct. 26, 2021. He was 21.

Brown was 20 when he organized a basketball tournament in Charleston that drew more than 300 people, his mother said.

“He had a heart for youth in the community,” she said.

That heart extended to his son, who was 1 when Brown died. Brown was “adamant” that his son have an involved father, an experience he did not get when he was a child, Barron-Brown said.

A father, a “motivator” and a community pillar, Brown’s absence in Charleston is being felt months after his death, Barron-Brown said. “I have 40-year-old people telling me how much of a leader he was. To know that the community still upholds my son to that degree, it’s remarkable as a mother.”