GUILDERLAND — “Tommy was my middle child, my pride and joy,” said his mother, April Rowley. “He was so charismatic. Everybody who met him just fell in love with him.”

Thomas Brown, known to his family and friends as “Tommy,” was born in Hudson on Nov. 15, 1996 and later moved to Delmar and attended Bethlehem schools. He moved with his family to Guilderland about a year ago, following the unexpected death of his father from a heart attack.

Tommy Brown died in the early morning hours of Saturday, Nov. 19, just four days after his 20th birthday, when, on a residential stretch of Delmar’s Bender Lane, he lost control of the Subaru WRX Impreza that, by all accounts, he loved dearly.

“He loved that car so much,” Ms. Rowley said. “He had rebuilt the whole thing.”

He had three different trunks for it, she said, that he could switch out, “depending on his mood.”

It was the feeling of freedom that he loved, she said, “just letting the wind run through your hair and being out there.” He was very involved in the car-enthusiast world, she said, going to car meets to compare cars and compare notes, and chatting online with other enthusiasts around the world.  

More than 300 people came, at very short notice, “from all over — North Carolina, New Jersey —” to a car meet that his friends organized for him on the night that he died, his mother said.

On a GoFundMe page organized by his sister to cover the costs of his funeral, many car enthusiasts from around the world made donations and left messages on the site, saying that they had never met him in person but that they felt like they knew him.

Mr. Brown loved all cars, said his friend Johnny Dietz, but especially the one he owned, the ’02 Subaru WRX. “It’s a really cool-looking car, which I think is the main reason Tommy wanted it,” Mr. Dietz said. “It’s a pretty nice car, you know what I mean?”

Mr. Brown was “very, very straight-edge,” said Johnny Dietz. He “never really dabbled” in any type of drugs or anything; he didn’t need them in order to be happy, said his friend.

Johnny Dietz called “feeling the speed” a kind of “ecstasy” and an “overwhelming feeling,” and said that that’s what Tommy Brown loved. “There’s nothing to describe it. No drug, no anything, could even compare to the adrenaline of just being pushed back in your seat and feeling the wind.”

“He liked learning from life,” said his mother, as opposed to book learning.

Mr. Brown treated everyone “like a brother,” said Mr. Dietz. It was not long after they had started to become friends, in high school, that Johnny Dietz argued with his family and was kicked out of his house; Tommy immediately offered to let Johnny stay with him and his family. Johnny took him up on it and lived with the Brown family for three or four months, he said, “and ever since then, we’ve been totally inseparable.”

In addition to cars, Mr. Brown also loved animals, said his mother. He previously worked at Aqueduct Animal Hospital, caring for, playing with, and walking dogs.

But he really loved the job he held at the time of his death, “being around cars all day” as a valet at Goldstein Subaru.

“The proudest moment of my life,” his mother said, “was when I went to the hospital that night and they told me he was an organ donor. It didn’t surprise me, but it made me so unbelievably proud, that he was 20 years old and that he thought to check that box.”

Someone else is going to be able to see the world now through his eyes, she continued.

Ms. Rowley said that she could not regret his love of speed, since it was such an essential part of who he was. Referring to the actor known for “The Fast and the Furious,” Ms. Rowley said of her son, “He had said to one of his friends that he wanted to go out like Paul Walker, and he did.”

But asking young people to “slow down just a little bit” is going to be “my slogan and my wish” from now on, said his mother, who added that, if she can reach just one person and encourage him or her to slow down for the sake of the parents, siblings, and friends that could otherwise be left behind, “Tommy’s death will not have been in vain.”

At his memorial service, his mother said, family and friends will have on hand one of the trunks of his beloved car and a Sharpie pen, so that his friends can write messages on it.

****

Thomas “Tommy” Brown is survived by his mother, April Rowley; his sister, Brittany Brown; his brother, Gregory Brown Jr.; his sister-in-law, Kaelynn Gagne; his nephew, Logan Huntington Brown; and “the many aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well as the hundreds of friends, who loved Thomas so very much,” his mother wrote in a tribute.

His father, Gregory Thomas Brown Sr., died in August 2015.

Funeral arrangements are by New Comer Funeral Home, at 343 New Karner Rd., Colonie. A memorial service will be held there on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2016, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Memorial donations may be made to the Mohawk-Hudson Humane Society, 3 Oakland Ave., Menands, NY 12204.

— Elizabeth Floyd Mair