They sat outside the Julia Thompson Smith Chapel the other day, showing off matching rings, beaming like newlyweds, talking about the recommitment ceremony that almost didn't happen.

Since the dawning of 2006, Kim and Jerry Brown had looked forward to celebrating their silver anniversary, but life kept getting in the way.

Alexander Acosta / aacosta@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Kim Brown (center) needs a cane the day she and her husband, Jerry, renew their vows. She had suffered a stroke in May. Their son Dorian carries her cane for her.

Alexander Acosta / aacosta@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Jerry (left) and Kim Brown renew their vows at the Julia Thompson Smith Chapel. Chaplain Kate Colussy-Estes (center) presides.

That year — their 25th anniversary — they'd gotten swept up in their son Dorian's college application process. Jerry Brown was busy with the Atlanta Track Club foundation, where he'd been serving on the board. Kim was just as busy as a member of the Paideia School board. Together, they ran the parent council at Agnes Scott College, where their daughter Whitney was a student.

"We just weren't able to focus enough attention on it," Jerry Brown said.

Maybe next year, they thought.

They'd barely rung in 2007 when life started to speed along — just as busy, just as unpredictable — and they realized it wasn't going to happen. There were more pressing things to attend to.

Whitney was scheduled to graduate on May 12, the day before Mother's Day, four days before, well, another Brown anniversary. Added to that, Dorian's fast-approaching graduation from Paideia.

On May 18, one of the rare days Jerry took off work, the couple stood in the kitchen talking, trying to decide which of them would pick up Dorian after commencement practice that afternoon. Kim became faint and collapsed.

Jerry was close enough to shield his wife from much of the impact, but they both hit the floor. He called 911.

Kim, the family would later learn, had suffered a debilitating stroke. She could not speak and was paralyzed on her right side.

Doctors operated to relieve the swelling on her brain. Friends and family rallied so that Jerry could leave the hospital and attend his son's graduation.

His heart was at once happy and heavy. This was his boy's big day. His wife was in intensive care, facing what doctor's predicted would be a long, slow recovery.

On June 28, Jerry's 54th birthday, doctor's dismissed Kim. The family could breathe again.

"That was my birthday present last year," Jerry said, smiling. For his 55th, he would get another one just as sweet.

Sometime in late February or early March, Brown bumped into retired Dean Gué Hudson from Agnes Scott. He'd heard the college had recently completed the Julia Thompson Smith Chapel and wondered whether it might be available in time for the recommitment ceremony he and Kim had been planning.

The couple loved the all-women's college. They had made many friends on the DeKalb County campus, including Hudson.

She laughed when Brown asked if he and his wife might christen the chapel with their ceremony.

Although the college wouldn't begin taking requests from the public to use the facility until Sept. 15, Hudson liked the idea. Consider it done, she told him.

On July 19, Hudson along with some 60 of the Browns' closest friends gathered in the chapel for the big day.

Whitney escorted her father to the altar, where he waited for his bride, strolling down the aisle on their son's arm.

Kim Brown needed a cane to get there, but she got there. The bride beamed in white linen, happy the day that they had looked forward to had finally come.

Love, they said, brought them together more than 25 years ago. And love had kept them together for yet another wedding day.

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