A community is mourning after Yvonne Brown, a beloved English teacher and loving mother of two, recently died of COVID-19.
Brown taught in both Prince George’s and Montgomery counties in Maryland. She leaves behind her partner and their two daughters, who are 10 and 11 years old.
Her partner, Neville Adams, is sharing his grief and his plea for people to get vaccinated.
Adams says Brown always uplifted others.
"She would want them to feel like they’re fabulous and whatever it is that they want to do, to shoot for it," he said.
Adams said Brown, a longtime English teacher at Parkdale High School, and their daughters tested positive for COVID-19 last month. When Brown had trouble breathing, she was rushed to a hospital. She developed strep and pneumonia, and she had to be put on a ventilator.
Her family was forced to say goodbye over Zoom.
"You need to talk to people who are sick, to try to give them the will to survive. So I told them to say things like, 'Wake up, Mommy,'" Brown said.
But she never did. Brown died the day after Thanksgiving.
Adam says he tried many times to convince Brown to get vaccinated, but he says she believed conspiracy theories about the shots.
"It incenses me that there are people who are purposefully trying to misinform the public," he said.
Support from the community is pouring in as he begins to raise his daughters as a single dad.
Adams says he wants everyone to remember Brown's loving spirit.
"She never met anyone who wouldn’t say that she sparked them in their lives," he said.
Brown was also an accomplished author. She wrote a book called "Crying Girl" and was the social media chair for the Toni Morrison Society.
