Barrancas National Cemetery

NAVARRE — Shirley Brown may have joked that she didn't like her title as "First Lady of Navarre," but it was a fitting moniker.After more than 30 years of volunteering, ribbon cuttings and community outreach in Navarre, Brown passed away Dec. 23. She was 81.Shirley and her late husband of 55 years, Warren "Charlie" Brown, were active in the Navarre community and made friends everywhere they went. When Charlie passed away in 2011, Shirley continued to be active by volunteering with the Navarre Garden Club, Holley Navarre Seniors Center, First Baptist Church of Fort Walton Beach and serving on the board for Baptist Hospital in Navarre."She was the most active woman I'd ever known," said Tommy Vatter, co-owner of Kool Breeze. "She was a very remarkable woman."Vatter was one of Shirley's "adopted sons," as she called them. She and Charlie never had children, but they had hundreds of friends who they treated like family. Over the course of their 30-year friendship, Vatter and Shirley would go out to lunch about once a month. He'd order liver and onions and she'd order pork chops. If he missed a date, Shirley would stop by his office to talk about "anything and everything.""I will miss that," he said of her visits. "She was sweet ... I have a lot of fond memories."CEO of Greater Navarre Area Chamber of Commerce Tony Alexander was another one of Shirley's adopted sons. When it came to getting information on the Navarre community, Shirley was the person to talk to."She was a tremendous resource of historical knowledge, having lived here since the 1970s," he said. "And there was not a person Shirley didn't know."Like many of her friends, Alexander made one last visit to Shirley's hospital room last week. He said he's grateful for that final memory."She joked that she knew there would come a day when we regretted being adopted ... I had taken her to the emergency room as she got ill," Alexander recalled. "But I told her, 'Mama Shirley, you didn't adopt us. We adopted you.' "Jerry Foster of Keller Williams Realty counts Shirley as one of the f...