Interview with Charles Brown, Immediate Past President

Hello, and thank you for listening to PVA's Audio Newsletters. I'm Victoria Deck, digital strategist at Paralyzed Veterans of America. Joined by my colleague, Vance. Charles Brown served as president of PVA from 2021 to 2023. Now that he is transitioning into his current role as Immediate Past President with the Executive Committee, we met up with him to discuss his accomplishments during his time at PVA and what led him to be a part of the organization.

Victoria: Hi Charlie, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. How are you doing?

Charles Brown:

I'm doing well. Thank you. And thank you for the interview.

Victoria: Great, thank you so much. So first of all, you're a native of Missouri. How would you say Missouri shaped you as you grew up?

Charles Brown:

How did Missouri shape me growing up? My parents are both first generation off of the farm. They literally came from the boot heel area. My father came from a sharecropper family and struggled minorly during the farming process to grow a large family that spread out across the lower part of Missouri and then up to the St. Louis area. My mother's from a farming community also, and not very far from my father. They were quote/unquote a little more well off, but not realistically. Both struggled and realized that the hard work that they did in their life would lead them to a better life. They both met in southeast Missouri and in order to have a better life, they brought the family to St. Louis where my siblings and I were born. My father got a job with a large corporation, which allowed him to actually expand the field even further of possibilities for his family.

So Missouri was a huge influence because it taught me both the basics of growing up in a city and with family around, and also what it meant to go to the countryside, work the dirt, get your hands dirty and help the family grow. My father's job in the transfers we took also helped influenced my life. I've lived in north Georgia, I've lived in the Pittsburgh area, but St. Louis, I will still call St. Louis home. It's always been an honor to call St. Louis home or Missouri home because it's just the Midwest people have a different attitude and politeness to them. Each area I've lived in, I've been blessed because of the friends and family that I've met through there. I love Missouri and we'll always call it home.

Vance: I know that you love Missouri. I love Missouri too, and I heard Missouri had some great barbecue. Is that true?

Charles Brown:

So yes and no. I mean I'm not going to lie to you, when you've traveled around the country and you get to eat all the different barbecue around this nation, there are great barbecue places around. Kansas City has got some really good barbecue. St. Louis has a few spots that are well known. I spent time in the Memphis area and got to eat some of that delicious barbecue. I spent time in North Carolina and got their barbecue. To be brutally honest, my favorite barbecue comes out of Memphis.

Victoria:

It sounds like your background on the farm prepared you for the Marine Corps. Can you talk a little bit about what led you there?

Charles Brown:

I'll say this, my friends thought I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth. They didn't realize where my family came from and the hard work they put into it and what my family taught me as far as hard work goes, I was a struggling youth. I'd gone to college to do airline mechanics and still hadn't found my niche or where I really needed to be in the world. A friend was joining the Marine Corps, took me into the recruiter. I had a chance to talk to the recruiter. I've always been a fan of military aviation and I've always wanted to work on jets and particularly military jets. And this opportunity was presented to me and I took it. For me, it actually made me feel more balanced as a person.

I got to bootcamp was a harsh reality. I mean, truthfully, you think bootcamp, you know how bad could it be? But they break you down as a person and they teach you that you may have been a good individual before, but you need to be a better person as a whole. Your members in arms all rely on you and the hard work you do, so if you fail, they fail. It could cost their life. So the Marine Corps taught me many things and it taught me the integrity. It taught me how to be better, be better my own life to treat others better.

Vance:

Was there a particular reason you chose the Marine over all the other branches?

Charles Brown:

I'll be honest with you, it was the fact that it was presented to me in the right way by the right person. The recruiter that they had there was persuasive enough and yeah, I guess you'd say I was comfortable that a friend of mine was going there also. I didn't realize that several other people from high school had already gone into the Marine Corps. There was a guy that graduated a year before me and when I was in bootcamp, I was in my third phase, which means the third month of bootcamp and was going to church on Sunday and he walks up to me and he says, "I don't know if you remember me." And I looked at him, I said, "Of course I remember you." I said, "You were a year older than me." He says, "Yeah, but when I heard you were here," he says, "I realized I could do this."

And I said, "You can do this, but you have to realize one thing." I said, "You are no longer who you were. You're now part of a team and your full work. Your team relies on you. You cannot fail. Don't think of this as that you're going to be the leader now like you were in high school and nobody's going to follow you. You have to move and be the leader. You can't just demand it. You have to give it back." And that's one of the things that it taught me at that point in time was that even those who were older than me then, were reaching out to me to find out what it meant to be a Marine and what it would take to be a Marine.

Victoria:

Your service in the Marine Corps resulted in a severe injury. Can you tell us a little bit about the story that led to that?

Charles Brown:

I was home on leave my sister's wedding. My family was moving from St. Louis to North Georgia. I had a pickup truck and I took the materials that the moving company would move down, the paints, the gases, the things like that. It was a new home, new home to my family of course, but been in the neighborhood for a few years. My parents arrived the day they... I'd been down there a couple days before they got there. The day they arrived, I had lived there earlier in life from first through fourth grade, so I had a lot of friends still in the area.

I went inside, I changed into some swim trunks. I came outside and I was trying to do a racing dive off the side of the pool, something I had done every day with nobody else around. That day my parents were in the pool and one of my friends was there, and for some reason when I dove out, I ended up more in a downward pike position. I struck my head in the bottom of the pool. I crushed cervical five and split cervical six. I was an instant quadriplegic. Didn't realize the severity of my wound. I thought I had wounds. I just thought I had broken both my shoulders and was just in severe pain. An ambulance came, they put me on a backboard. They brought me up out of the pool, onto the stretcher, got me up onto the driveway. The problem is our driveway was a very steep driveway and there was no way the ambulance could put me into it and drive up the driveway safely.

There was no way that they could make it work, so they had to call in a second crew, including the fire department truck. They took six rescue personnel to carry the gurney and myself up to an ambulance that was flat up on the street. The two mile drive to the hospital took them 35 minutes because they didn't want to cause any more trauma or damage. It was a shocking moment in my life. I didn't realize how close to death I really was. My parents were told that night that I was lucky that I would survive. If I survived 24 hours I'd be very lucky. Stabilized in that hospital for four days before I was airlifted by Huey Helicopter from North Georgia all the way over to Augusta. People always say the story is that I'm injured while I was serving at Cherry Point, and that's the truth. I was serving at Cherry Point, but I was not at Cherry Point when I was injured. For me, I was going to correct that record every time it's said.

We were told I had a choice to go to Shepherd Clinic in Atlanta or I could go to the Augusta VA and we reached out to a dear family friend who was military, and the first thing that that gentleman said is, "The best spinal cord system in this nation is the VA hospitals." I knew nothing about PVA at the time or anything, but that advice was the best advice I could ever receive. I've met two military members that went through Shepherd Clinic just about the same time that I did, and it took them four or five more years to know about PVA and the VA and all the care they could receive from there. And their time going through rehab was very short.

One of those gentlemen has lost his life already because he just struggled so much, never truly received all the benefits he should have received. The other one has gone through the VA system of care but he still... I still say that had he gone to the VA, I think he'd be in much better shape today. So I'm blessed that I was given the opportunity and chose, was given the opportunity and chose Augusta VA for my care.

Vance:

In such difficult times, what kept you going? What kept you motivated?

Charles Brown:

I guess I, laying back in my Marine Corps training is that you don't quit. You fight through everything. I still had to believe all the way through, even after my fourth month of being paralyzed and not being able to move much, that I was going to be able to walk out of the hospital and go back and serve my command. When I came to the realization that I wasn't going to walk again, I didn't care. I was going back to the Marine Corps. I was going to go back and fulfill any duty I could to serve this nation. I was feel like I was leaving my fellow Marines down that I couldn't fulfill my duty in some way.

Vance:

And that led you to PVA?

Charles Brown:

When I got transferred over to the Augusta VA, the first day I was there, nobody was letting my room other than my family. And then the next day they came in and put my halo on and it was a traumatic experience. And it was the third day that I was actually at the Augusta VA that a gentleman from PVA came into my room, told me about this organization. It sounded like pie in this sky. "We'll take care of this, we'll take care of that." And I thanked him for his time, but I told him I was going back in the Marine Corps and he said, "Well, what if you don't?" And I just looked at him and I said, "There is no what? There was a, I will go back in the Marine Corps, I will fulfill my duties."

It probably took about three or four more days of stabilization. And they realized that having me in a room by myself wasn't going to be good for me or my attitude because I was disgruntled because they wouldn't let me do the things I wanted to do. I wanted to sit up. I wanted to start moving and getting things done. I knew the longer you stayed down, the worse things would be. It didn't strike me that because I didn't have surgery to stabilize my injury. I was only in a halo that I was still inches from death's door, any other movement could have killed me. So when I got into the room, the four man room with some of the other Veterans that were in there going through their initial rehab, conversation started and we talked a lot. The gentleman from PVA came back into my room and he talked to me for a minute and I just told him, "Fine, have whoever you want come talk to me. Just tell me these things."

Chuck Eiser was the guy that came in my room, the PVA NSO. Chuck spent about two hours with me and my mother that day to talk about PVA, what we really needed to focus on what PVA would do for me. It was the first time I could honestly say that PVA saved my life. File for my benefits, helped me file for the things I needed to do to make sure that the home I was going to would be accessible. Started the process of getting new concrete poured in areas where ramps or doorways need to be widened, got the bathroom started in as far as construction going. The chapter level was a different situation. I didn't really realize what a chapter was for or what it would be needed for, especially with the national organization taking care of me as far as filing for benefits and making sure that I would have the pay and the care I needed when I got home.

Victoria:

Wow, that is such an incredible story. You touched on this a little bit, but can you talk more about the role PVA played in your recovery?

Charles Brown:

In 1987, I went to the very first Winter Sports clinic in Grand Junction, Colorado. I had a horrible time, I had great time out there, but it was rough on me and I felt like I couldn't do much. It really took a lot of wind out of my sails. There were, like I said, the... Spending time with the chapter, it really wasn't comfortable for me. I moved back to St. Louis in November of '87 to get active in sports and do things. The ADA wasn't involved at the time, and getting around places was rough. I did wheelchair sports. I was very frustrated with inaccessibility of a lot of places. I got involved with some organizations to make sure that the ADA was getting passed, and then I got invited. I kept getting invited to the National Veterans Wheelchair Games and I equated them to the same thing as the Winter Sports Clinic.

I didn't think it'd be fun at all. I thought it'd be horrific experience. I finally went to the games in 1992, the Gateway chapter. I had moved from the southeastern chapter to the gateway chapter. And Gene Creighton, the president of the Gateway at the time, came over to me and we talked for a few minutes and he says, "You're a young man. You're active. I know you were involved with getting the ADA passed and some things in St. Louis. I know you do sports. We need your help." And I looked at him and I said, "What can I do for you? I mean honestly, so I'm not your age. I don't know what you guys do. I know what the chapter in Southeastern did and they didn't do things that were anything that I wanted to do. What can I do for you?"

And Gene says, "Actually, you can help us spread the word, what the ADA is. You can help this place be more accessible. You can help mentor more Veterans your age or younger to teach them that life doesn't end, that you can do more things. And you can get more active with the chapter and we can figure out more things to help more Veterans." And it intrigued me. Gene Creighton really intrigued me at that point. I went to my very first Gateway chapter meeting shortly after that and was subsequently named to the board of directors. It was an honor to serve there. My first job was to be the ADA coordinator for the Gateway chapter. I got called by businesses, other Veterans service organizations to make their buildings and their areas more accessible. I would roll up and I'd say, "Well, first thing is you need to have a ramp for a wheelchair to come to your front door. Your poured pad out front has to be a certain size so you can open the door in your wheelchair."

I showed them so many things in different areas. Gene Creighton given me the faith to come in to be able to do that kind of work really is the man that I will say inspired me to really step up and do more work with PVA to start with.

Vance:

What's some of the proudest work have you done with PVA?

Charles Brown:

Being on the FAC, going to the hospitals, looking at hospital directly in the eye and telling him he's failing at doing his job and serving his Veterans. Finding Veterans that have been in the community and not told that they could actually receive care at the VA hospital. Getting them into a VA hospital, getting them the care they need, seeing their wounds healed, getting them improper equipment. Getting them accessible housing, getting them places and back together with their families that they thought they would never be able to do. Making sure those nations more accessible. I'm fighting right now to make sure that the air travel's accessible. And that past in 1986. There's no excuse.

There's no excuse that the airline industry is so far behind the ADA, which passed in 1990. It's ridiculous. So the moments that I'm proudest of is making sure that things are more accessible, that more Veterans are getting the proper care they earned and looking at people in the eye and inside hospitals and saying, "No, the failure is not the system. The failure is you. You have the right ability to make these changes, yet you are refusing to do your job." So my proudest moment is getting Veterans better care.

Victoria:

I've definitely been so inspired by the work that you've done on Capitol Hill and testifying in front of Congress. Would you mind speaking a little bit about that?

Charles Brown:

I came to my first advocacy legislation seminar in 1993. I don't know if you guys were at Ad Love this year, but I brought my very first book. I still have my very first book from obviously legislation. It's a huge binder. It weighs five and a half pounds. We got it delivered to the chapter, I read through it. I took it to the meetings with me here in dc. I listened to the presenters and what we were supposed to say to our legislators. I had already started working with my state legislators before all this with the ADA and things like that, so some of them knew me. But being here and seeing them in their offices here was eye-opening. It was game-changing. I saw presidents give testimonies in front of Congress, the hearing panels. Sat the receptions, saw glad handshakes, things being talked about, not passing.

The proudest moment I had was the ability to actually look a senator in the eye and have a senator promise me that he would support a bill that he had no chance of supporting before, and saying that he didn't realize how much his no was hurting other people. That was one of my proudest moments, and that came this year. Knowing that his no was going to prevent the passage of a bill that would get more Veterans the care they need. It was just an honor just to hear that that senator looked me in the eye and said he would say yes to the bill.

Vance:

Wow. That's a reason. That's powerful. I know each organization faces challenges. What do you see as a challenge for PVA currently and what we are doing to spearhead that challenge and get ahead of that challenge?

Charles Brown:

Well, the same challenge that we've had for years is that to the younger Veterans, we're seen as an old organization. I was injured at the age of 20. I saw a bunch of old men running a group of things, and they weren't doing the things that I thought needed to be done for the younger generation. I still see that as our challenge. There's Veterans out there with spinal cord injuries that have a lot of issues that won't serve with us. They won't come to PVA. I think our biggest challenge is getting our message out to them that we're not an old organization. We may have been around for 75 years, but we're here to advocate for their healthcare, to make sure it's there when they need it, because they're going to need it. They definitely going to need it sometime in their life. Whether they need it now or they need it 20 or 30 years down the road, they're going to need their healthcare. And if we don't fight for it now, if we don't get them to help fight for it now we're all going to be in trouble.

There's outside forces now that want the VA to become privatized, and that's dangerous for the Veterans and the promises made by the nation. Our message is there. We have some great partners. We have some great donors, to those that will hear this, if they hear this outside of PVA. Your dollars do make a difference. The money that you give us goes to helping our Veterans and improving the quality of their lives. It improved my life. PVA saved my life numerous times. Just recently, I had a very serious issue, and if it wasn't for PVA and the ability to reach out for help, I think I would've been dead this past week.

Vance:

Wow. I think we need to lighten it up a little bit. That was hard. Rugby. I know you're into rugby. How did you get to rugby? What inspired you about rugby? I like to learn a little bit more about rugby and your story.

Charles Brown:

I've always been sports active. Like I said, when I moved back to St. Louis, I wanted to be active in sports. I wanted to do something, which is really why I moved back to St. Louis. I wanted to become more active in life. I was always looking for something that was beyond track and field. Throwing a javelin, a shot, a disc running, pushing a chair around a track. That's all well and good. In 1992, I went to the National Veterans Wheelchair Games where I was introduced to wheelchair rugby. It's like gladiators. You're in chairs that have big cages in front of you. You slam into each other, you block each other off defensively. You pass the ball. You try to push past each other. It's a physically grueling game, but it is so fun, it's rewarding. And I played in my everyday chair for the first three years, which if anybody would know, it's pretty damaging to an everyday chair.

Its original name is Murder Ball, which as a kid growing up, if you ever played sports, that meant that whoever got the ball, you just try to just wipe them out. It lit a fire in me. It was the ability to push up another court and be an active participant in a sport. People that I met through the previous sports that I'd played, I worked with them to try and help build a team in St. Louis. We built the St. Louis Rolling Rams. Some great coaches were the real, truly what really brought us all together. But was a lot of phone calls the first two years to get the whole team working. Now it's evolved to a great, great program, but the original intent was for quadriplegics who couldn't play other sports to be able to go out and play sport, and I'm proud that it has evolved because it needs to, it needed to. We do have a low point tournament that's out there, which means the players with the least abilities can still play together, and they still get playing time and do good things.

Vance:

Would you consider itself the Michael Jordan of rugby? No? You won't.

Charles Brown:

No, no. No way. No. There's so many great athletes out there from rugby that, no, I'm a proud member of two teams, I played for the Rolling Rams and I played for the South Florida Rattlers. I was a contributor to both those teams. I enjoyed playing with them. I coached the Rattlers for two years before I finally decided to retire completely. But no. No, there's Michael Jordan. We have some Michael Jordans out there that do some incredible plays. I love the sport of boccia. That's one thing I'm proud of also, was that when I was in introduced to the sport of boccia back in 2010 or 2011, we didn't have any Veterans playing the sport, and through self-advocacy work with both the organization that was running it at the time, we were able to bring it to the National Veterans Wheelchair Games.

We've been able to get athletes, Veteran athletes involved. They are now on the international team. They earn stipends for training. They make international competitions, and I have high hopes that eventually they're going to bring medals home for the USA. If you want to know where I feel there, I feel like I'm a leader in getting the Veteran community involved in that sport.

Victoria:

If you had to pick an actor who would play you, if your life were portrayed in a movie, who would that be?

Charles Brown:

I don't want to say this one, but it'd be fun. Let's see what Jack Black would do.

Vance:

Oh, wow. I could see it. I could see a Jack Black.

Charles Brown:

He came up because he's serious, but he's crazy. I would not pick Zack Galifinakis. I've watched some of his movies and I think he's just out there too much. So Jack Black would be a good choice.

Vance:

What advice would you have for Veterans who are recently separated and struggling with disabilities and just looking for some encouragement or some hope?

Charles Brown:

Military's always about the buddy system. You're always about your teammates are, who your squad mates are. It's the same thing when you're outside. You may have just gotten out. You may have an injury. We call it peer mentoring, but truthfully, it's finding or having that person you can contact. You're struggling, don't hesitate to reach out to, even to an old buddy ask a counselor say, "Look, is there anybody you can get me contact with as another Veteran?" It's hard to do. It's hard to say. It's hard to ask. I mean and I, like I said, I found it recently, but I was able to reach out to the right person during my time as struggle, and it helped me. Even today, it still helps me knowing that I have the resource of PVA, the resources of the VA to get through struggles. You have to use your voice. You have to say, "I need help, or I have a struggle."

Victoria: You'll find more information about the current executive committee at pva.org/leadership. Special thanks to Charles for agreeing to meet with us and for all he accomplished during his time as president at PVA.