Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,880

This is the grave of Jesse Brown.

Born in 1944 in Detroit, Brown grew up in Chicago. He was a good student and managed to get into the City Colleges of Chicago, the public community college system in the city. But what really were the opportunities for a young Black man in Chicago in the early 60s? Not much. So he joined the Marines in 1963. He was in early actions in Vietnam and suffered a serious wound in a battle near Da Nang in 1965. He did not lose his arm, but it was partially paralyzed for the rest of his life.

Brown was discharged after his injury. He went back to Chicago and got involved in Disabled American Veterans, founded in the aftermath of World War I to assist disabled veterans. He got hired on as staff shortly after he showed up. People there encouraged this bright young man to get his four year college degree. He started taking classes at Roosevelt University in Chicago and then, really having a lot of potential, was able to transfer to Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Brown then went back to working for DAV, which of course had a ton of need in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. By 1973, he was supervising the DAV’s Washington office. He rose and rose and became the organization’s deputy director in 1983 and then executive director in 1988.

So when Bill Clinton became president in 1993, he tapped Brown to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs. It was a pretty uncontroversial pick and he was easily confirmed. His agenda at the VA was mostly around continuing his work for the disabled. He fought to extend services to groups of veterans often forgotten about–women, people exposed to Agent Orange and (to some extent anyway) those suffering from whatever Gulf War Syndrome really was. He also moved resources to help deal with homeless veterans, which was a huge issue at that time, as many may remember. His biggest victory was pushing Congress to expand VA health care to all veterans, not just those with a demonstrative injury or who had no other health care options. He also fought for funding for counseling for veterans who had experienced sexual assault.

Brown was also one of the leaders in the movement to build the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial in Washington, a process which started in 1998 and continued until its final construction in 2014. Of course, I have no idea this even exists but then there’s lots of monuments in DC like that. Anyway, the monument has a couple of quotes from Brown on it. He did not live to see it, but he did play an important role in getting it started.

By the time this started, Brown had stepped down as VA Secretary, which happened in July 1997. Not sure why he stayed around for just the first few months of Clinton’s second term. But in 1999, Brown was diagnosed with ALS. He died of that horrendous disease in 2002. He was 58 years old.

Jesse Brown is buried on the confiscated lands of the traitor Lee, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.

If you would like this series to visit other Secretaries of Veterans Affairs, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Ed Derwinski is also in Arlington, as is Togo West. In truth, there are so few VA secretaries since the department was only transformed into a Cabinet level position in 1993 and naturally, them being buried in Arlington makes sense. So let’s just get the whole collection! Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.