James Brown:
CLASS OF 1964
Colfax High SchoolClass of 1964
Colfax, CA
James's Story
Life
Went to college in a 5-yr joint program (3 yrs at University of San Francisco, followed by 2 yrs at University of Santa Clara). After 5 yrs of carrying 21 to 23 units, I finished with two engineering degrees and a resolve never to crack a book again. I went into the Army after college. I was in Armor (that's tanks), and R&D. First assignment was to Friedberg, Germany. I was at the same base where Elvis Presley was assigned during "G.I. Blues", though Elvis was long-since gone. I met Kathy, who was a teacher at the DoD school nearest our brigade, and took her on a blind date to take pictures of the autumn leaves in Heidelberg. A date worthy of a Hollywood movie; we walked around Heidelberg Castle, crossed the Karl Theodore bridge, took pictures of the autumn foliage from the steep banks overlooking the Neckar River, and finished with dinner at a gasthaus in the old Student Quarter. I proposed to her 17 days later (Lucky Break #1). I was fortunate enough to command a tank company during that tour, and did so well that I was selected to win a free trip to Southeast Asia at the end of the tour. I was an advisor in the Mekong Delta. There are few roads there, so we did most of our travel in Air America planes and in small boats. I ate only Vietnamese food while there, and can attest that cobra meat does not taste like chicken, and raw duck blood doesn't taste like duck. The experience gained me lots of "face" with the Vietnamese, but lost me 35 lbs. To this day the taste of coriander (we call it cilantro in California) gives me flashbacks to Vietnam. Nothing traumatic; just a jolting reminder that I don't ever want to eat anything that tastes like chicken unless it's chicken. Back to Ft. Knox, KY after Vietnam, where I was lucky enough to get a second tank company. Both our kids (James and Patty) were born there. I requested a secondary specialty in Research & Development, and because of the engineering degrees, I got it. After the Officer Career Course, I was assigned to an R&D job at Ft. Knox. After Ft. Knox, it was back to Germany again. By this time, we were already comfortable with the language and culture, so we enjoyed the second tour immensely. At sometime during the R&D assignment back at Ft. Knox, I must have briefed somebody at the right time, because I got a call one day from the head of the Engineering Dept. at West Point, asking if I would like to be a professor there. I had recovered from academic burnout by that time and the prospect of an all-expenses-paid Master's Degre...Expand for more
e was too good to pass. The Army sent me to grad school at The University of Michigan (Lucky Break #2). After Michigan, I served a 4-yr tour as a professor at West Point, in the Engineering Dept. Among other things, I taught a course in Combat Vehicle Design, and one of my guest lecturers was from FMC in San Jose. A few months later, he called me and asked if I would like to come work for them when I retired the following summer (Lucky Break #3). Retired from Army in 1989 and worked as an engineer in Santa Clara for 16 years. One year, we came out to Hawaii to visit some friends we had known in California. He was in the Navy, and had made Admiral, so we couldn't resist coming out to Pearl Harbor to visit them. While out for what was supposed to be just a vacation, Kathy and I both thought Hawaii would be a pretty good place to retire. (Lucky Break #4) We signed up for a waiting list in a development of semi-custom houses out west of Pearl Harbor. We spent the next year pondering whether moving to Hawaii was really a good idea, or just a spur-of-the-moment impulse. Just for good measure, we also spent part of the year doing architectural drawings of the features we wanted changed in the house, and on a swimming pool we wanted to add. When our number came up on the waiting list, we committed and put the California house on the market. I retired from the engineering job in 2005. (Kathy had retired from teaching in Livermore the previous year to devote her full time to planning the move.) I now work as a consulting engineer, which means I am basically my own replacement in the old job. In spare time, I volunteer as a docent on USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor, monitoring endangered Monk Seals and Humpback whales for NOAA, write books on military subjects, volunteer at the USO, and sail. I live in Kapolei, Hawaii with wife Kathy (not a Colfax grad) and two beagles, Sherlock and Watson. The kids are grown and married, and we are grandparents (thrice). The beagles get an hour walk on the beach almost every day, followed by a 20-minute swim in the pool. The exercise does them, and me, a world of good. Kathy plays in a Japanese Taiko band, and her curriculum unit on the endangered Hawaiian Monk Seal was recently approved for state-wide classroom use. That's about it; lots of cold winters out in the tanks in Germany, some sweaty months in the Mekong Delta, asking Kathy to move ten times since we've been married, many years of toiling over a computer, and somewhere along the way picking up four Lucky Breaks.
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