Ana M Cabanas Brown

Live Stream of Funeral Services Use this Link - 4:10 EST Ana M. Cabañas-Brown, Homeschooling Pioneer and Matriarch, Dies at 64 Born in Havana, Cuba, on January 25, 1956, Ana Margarita Cabañas moved to Denver, Colorado, in 1961, where she began an improbable journey into a life of adventure, struggle and scattered reward. She was a precocious elementary student who got in trouble for the fish she would draw, during class. She filled notebooks. Her teachers took them away. While at St. Mary’s Academy, she cultivated a love for piano and music that would continue on and be shared with all of her children. At CU Boulder, her love of geology and culture drove her down the road of physical anthropology, leading her to dig in Lubbock, Texas. That summer, she was a standout. Following, she was invited on a long term dig in Lima, Peru. She was determined, but that funny thing called life happened; she fell in love. Faced with a dilemma, she did the most obvious thing in her heart--she walked away from one dream into another one. Shortly after she married, she gave birth to her first child, and then went on to have four more children. Preciousness graduated to recalcitrance as she made the unpopular decision to homeschool her children in the mid 1980s. Aside from teaching them how to read, write, add, subtract, multiply and divide, she was a shrewd navigator of bureaucracy and an advocate of drawing outside the lines—something certainly apparent in her grown children. Taking her kids all over the country, she combined her love of marine biology, geology, music, history and literature in the cultivation of well-rounded and independent children. Taking up photography, she documented every step of the way. She was tough, loving and resourceful as a teacher, founding the Houston Area Education Alliance (HAEA). She became a leader in a group that provided support to homeschooling families. She was nationally published in homeschool publications and became not only a role model for parents, but also for the courts with regard to proper curricula. She was a quiet storm. After successfully preparing her five children for college, she found herself in the next chapter of her life; she was a manager at Macy’s known for cracking barcodes. She was a manager at Picture People, where she loved mentoring young photographers and showing them how to bend rules. After her marriage of twenty-nine years ended, she moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She rekindled old friendships and made new ones. Ann fell in love with succulents, and gardening in general. She became a vegan. If someone got up from Ann’s table, upon returning they would be surprised to find a cross in their burger or steak. She would give a mischievous grin. She moved to Florida in 2018 after a concussion and series of falls. With her mobility limited, she would sit outside under the palm trees, growing baby palms from coconuts found by the lake. She would talk with her friends from the neighborhood, and binge on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. She loved to watch the baby iguanas grow. She called them her ‘friends’. When people really spoke to her, they found a careful listener, a mentor, a friend. When she spoke, it was with glowing pride for her five children and countless grandchildren. Like every great love story, it was not finished. She was not finished with them, nor they with her. Ana died on September 7, 2020—the vigil of the feast of Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre, Patroness of her homeland Cuba, and will be buried on September 15, 2020, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. Ann is survived by her father, Humberto Cabañas, of Denver, Colorado; her five children: Konrad Brown, of Plantation, Florida; Anson Brown, of Fredericksburg, Virginia; Marcel Brown, of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Sister Maria Joseph Cabañas-Brown, of Nashville, Tennessee; Sacha Cabañas-Brown, of Alexandria, Virginia; and by her nineteen grandchildren: Dominic, Genevieve, Leo (Anson’s son), Philomena, Felicity, Rhys, Athanasius, Linus, Elias, Juliana, Kaspar, Fisher, Leo (Marcel’s son), Felix, Ignatius, Piers, David Eliott, and Oliver. She is preceded in death by her mother, Ana Cabañas, her sister, Teresita Cabañas, and her brother, Humberto Cabañas Jr.. The Mass of Christian Burial and Interment at Mount Olivet Cemetery will be celebrated privately and livestreamed, on Tuesday, September 15, at 2:30pm, at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Flowers may be sent to Mount Olivet.