A brief stroll down Highland Park’s Central Avenue reveals just how eager the city is to honor Jason Brown, its 19-year-old hometown Olympic bronze-medalist. The Highland Park Movie Theatre’s marquee reads, “Good luck Jason Brown. HPHS 2013. Men’s Figure Skating. Sochi Olympics.” Three blocks over, The First Bank of Highland Park’s message board says, “Good luck Jason Brown.” At HPHS, banners congratulating Brown festoon the hallways. And it was tough to look past the now-melted 10-foot ice sculpture of Brown — ponytail and all — that stood tall for a week in Port Clinton Square.
“Seeing the support means the world to me,” Brown gushed. “I was raised in Highland Park and I’ve been there almost all my life, so to have the support of the community throughout the years, from when I was skating as a kid to now…I can’t even express how much that means to me. I feel so lucky to be from Highland Park.”
To add to the celebration, Mayor Nancy Rotering declared February 7 “Jason Brown Day.”
“It was a great opportunity to raise awareness among people who may be living under rocks that we had one of our own going to the Olympics,” Rotering said. “So I picked the day of the opening ceremony, a day when people might be paying attention. Then when we hear [the announcers say], ‘from Highland Park, Illinois’ before he skates, I think, ‘that’s correct.'”
“I can’t even wrap my head around it,” Brown exclaimed. “It’s so, so surreal. That’s definitely not something I would ever have imagined in my entire life, to have a day named after me.”
But Brown isn’t the first Highland Park athlete to shine on Olympic ice. In fact, he’s the third. 50 years ago, at the 1964 Olympic games, figure skating pair Vivian and Ronald Joseph won bronze medals at Innsbruck, Austria.
At this year’s Olympiad, Brown’s fourth-place finish in the free skate helped team USA earn a bronze medal in the first-ever figure skating team event. Later in the week, he earned ninth place at the individual event, with a combined score of 238.37.
To watch those dazzling performances, the Park District set up a viewing party at the Centennial Ice Arena. Rotering watched closely as Highland Park cheered on its Olympian.
“When it was time for Jason to skate, everybody quickly sat and watched,” she said. “Everybody knew the routine and the music and knew where the difficult jumps were. Every time he hit a jump, the whole place went crazy, and the times when he sort of faltered, people were still cheering him on, but were nervous. It was really intense.”
And HPHS Principal Brad Swanson, who made certain that Brown’s routines were broadcast live throughout the school, smiled as he reflected on the 2013 HPHS graduate’s sudden fame.
“To know that he was sitting in a class next to them or walking down the hall with them just 12 months ago is a pretty awesome feeling for our students,” he commented. “And I think Jason would say this as well: [The enthusiastic support] is a statement about the tight-knit community that is Highland Park. The value of saying ‘we have a hometown hero and we have something to celebrate so let’s do that together,’ is there as well.”
Yet despite his widespread stardom and popularity, Brown remains humble.
“I haven’t really gotten used to people looking up to me,” he reflected. “I still feel like that same five-year-old from when I started skating at Centennial; I just view myself as Jason Brown, the local kid from Highland Park with shaggy hair.”
Sam Brief is a freelancer for Pioneer Press.