Getting to know you – Toni Brown and Sherman Hanna

We’re starting a new Portal series to learn more about members of our EHE family. We all have our distinctive backgrounds and interests, and we also have many things in common. We begin the series talking to:

Toniqua ‘Toni’ Brown, assistant to the associate dean, EHE Office of Research, Rm 138 Arps Hall— EHE tenure, 10 months

Sherman D. Hanna, professor, consumer sciences, Rm. 115A Campbell Hall — EHE tenure, 33 years

Where were you born and what brought you to Ohio?

Brown: “Originally I am from the Bronx, New York. I moved to Columbus in the sixth grade. My father — he’s from New York, too — brought me and my brothers here because he went to college in Ohio for a while.”

Hanna:  “I was born in Los Angeles. My father was in the Army so we moved a lot. I was faculty at Kansas State University when I interviewed here to be chair of the Department of Family Resource Management. I started in fall of 1986.”

Furry friends?

Brown: “As an adult, I had a dog named Kobe that I loved, but I felt guilty leaving him alone so much. I found him a forever home with someone in my church. Now he lives with a young woman who also has another dog.  Her whole family is a dog family, so he gets to go swimming and do things he never got to do with me.”

Hanna: “Actually I lived on a farm for a while and milked the cows. When you live on a 110-acre farm, you have dogs. I brought a dog when we moved here in ’86. It died after a couple of years.”

Interested in family genealogy?

Brown: “I know a little about my mother’s side, not so much on my father’s. My great grandmother on my mother’s side was full-blooded American Indian. When I was really young, she would take us to the reservation.”

Hanna: “Someone (on my wife’s side) found that she has an ancestor who was Charles VII, King of France in the 1400s. Supposedly, there was actually a (legitimate) offspring. I didn’t realize I’d married into royalty.”

How do you spend your free time?

Brown: “I enjoy creative crafts. I am always on Pinterest, finding things I can do. A couple of years ago, I found a coffee table at Goodwill for $10. I sanded, stained and painted it, and it is the best thing in my living room.  My ‘proud piece.’”

Hanna: “I like cycling. In winter, I do an exercycle while watching TV. In summer, we try to cycle the Olentangy Trail.  Some summers, we’ve rented an apartment for a couple of weeks in Germany or Austria and we’ll cycle along river paths.” 

Have you ever done something physically daring?

Brown: “On a cruise to Jamaica, we climbed Dunn’s River Falls. It was like rock climbing in water. We had to put on special shoes. Then we went jet skiing, which was scary but fun…. When I went to Houston recently (to visit a friend), we went indoor skydiving. It was so scary. I don’t know why I keep doing scary things.”

Hanna: “I remember when I was first a PhD student at Cornell, there was a department outing to a gorge that had some cliffs. I was climbing up precariously on a cliff, and my wife, who was not yet my wife, was saying, ‘What a stupid guy, taking that chance. Trying to show off.’”

Introvert or extrovert?

Brown: “I’m sort of an introvert but I know how to be an extrovert.  I think being in group settings, talking amongst a large group of people you don’t know can be intimidating, but I’m working on getting over first-time introduction jitters!”

Hanna:  “Probably an introvert. Probably getting better. When I was 20, I was really an introvert. When I interviewed here in 1985, Lena Bailey was dean. After my interview, she was hesitant to offer the job even though all the faculty wanted me. My theory was I came across as kind of a cold fish.”

How do you serve others?

Brown:  “I volunteer at church in the children’s ministry a couple times a month. I like how the children’s minds work and their different personalities. I’ve done it for about four years.”
“I also went on a church mission trip to El Salvador for a week in 2016. We helped with the start of building a community center for the people who lived on the mountain. Our time there was eye opening. The people are very poor. Although they do not have much food or the best living conditions, they have amazing spirits and a positive outlook on life. The experience gave me a different outlook on life and reminded me that I should be more grateful for my possessions and for the sense of safety that I feel in my environment. Not everyone is so fortunate.”

Hanna: “I like helping students and am probably best at helping grad students. I’m really proactive in staying in touch with our alumni. I maintain an email list and once a year or more, I send out an update. I think I have everybody who got a PhD since 1990 and some who finished before 1990.”

“On my trip to Asia last year, while we (he and his wife) were in Singapore, a former student from about 20 years ago saw on Facebook that I was there. She contacted me and we got together for the first time since she’d left Ohio State.”

“Then when we were in Shanghai, we were entertained by the family of a current PhD student. In Korea, a student from a couple of years ago organized a luncheon with former advisees of mine going back to 1985. That’s gratifying, the fact that they came because of the help I had given them. “

“One advantage of my being here so long is it’s pretty easy for people to keep track of me. I have the same email address I had 30 years ago.”