Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Veteran's Affairs Plus discusses the issues that veterans in Las Vegas deal with on a daily basis. Your host, David L. Washington connects listeners with relevant community resources and information that they need to help veterans or themselves.
Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program. You're listening to special programming sponsored by making moves, life coaching services. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. You
Speaker 1 0:42
what's going on good
Dave Washington 0:49
day Las Vegas. This is Veterans Affairs, plus on 91.5 jazz and more. I'm Dave Washington, your host, and I will be introducing our guest. In fact, for total disclosure, this is my uncle, Uncle Charlie Brown. He'll be on shortly. However, at this point, I want to certainly express condolences to our country and to our world on the loss of President Jimmy Carter. He was one of the presidents that I like, because he never lost his humanity. In my humble opinion, he cared about people, and he demonstrated it through his life, particularly with Habitat for Humanity. So may God be pleased with the work that the former President Jimmy Carter, 100 years old, is in reproach to repost today in Washington, DC. So again, condolences to his family birthdays, we had a heavenly birthday for my mentor and fire service colleague, Dr Carl Holmes, out of Oklahoma City, great guy, one of the co founders of the Carl Holmes executive development institute housed at Dillard University. So we appreciate the work that Doc did while he was here on Earth, a good friend of mine, Jackie Matthews birthday was is this month as well. Quick story on Jackie. Jackie, she helped me to start the Las Vegas fire foundation. I told her and Julie Murray, who at the time was Andre Agassi's chief fundraiser. I told him about what I wanted to do with the fire department. It comes because our firefighters was always going in their pockets and giving money to people who are in need. And they say, Hey, if you got an idea you want to work it. What do you think you need? I said, probably continuously in the bank, maybe $100,000 they said, that's easy, and they helped me get this thing going. So happy birthday, uh, Jackie Matthews and and I also appreciate again, my dear friend Julie Murray, who assisted me in getting that up and running. And also happy birthday this month to fire chief bertrall Washington, one of my colleagues, uh, who worked he and I worked together with Las Vegas Fire and Rescue for a number of years. So happy birthday, Bert. At this time, I'd like to introduce my uncle, Charlie Brown. Charlie, how you doing
Unknown Speaker 3:11
good? Thank you, Dave. How about yourself? I'm doing
Dave Washington 3:14
well. Doing well, Charlie, give our listening audience a little bit about your background and what branch and how long did you serve in the military?
Speaker 2 3:24
Well, I was at the Army Medical Corps, and I went in in 1955 volunteered, and I ended up in Erlang in Germany as a medical specialist, and I spent maybe a year and a half in Germany, and we gyro back to the US, and ended up at Fort Lewis, Washington.
Dave Washington 3:56
Fort Lewis, that's interesting, because I served the I was a cook and had got into some trouble. And originally I went to Korea. I was a army cook. In fact, was supposed to be a mechanic. I told him I didn't want to be a mechanic. So ultimately I got to be a cook, because I was interesting
Speaker 2 4:15
that you say that, because while I was in Germany, they transferred me from the medical corps to the artillery battalion. What was that? Right? I had no experience in it. It took the luck of a black medical officer in the medical service over there to get me back into the medics, and from there, which I wrote back to the US to squad Louis Washington, where I was put back in the artillery again. It seemed as if they were determined to make me an artillery for. US. Fortunately, I read the paper that there was a going to be a Golden Gloves tournament and st Seattle, Washington, and we were in Tacoma, which was right outside of Seattle, right so I said, Well, I think I better start training and enter the Golden Gloves. The Army already had their team entered for the gloves, so I couldn't enter with them. So I went on my own, and as fate would have it, I won the Golden Gloves. And of course, the army says, Nope, you got to come and join the special services now. Special Services now, and which turned out to be a great thing, because he ended up traveling all over to tournaments, even at a tournament with Cassius Clay, who was Muhammad Ali and and I met some coaches from California who said, Hey, we give scholarships to boxing to boxers in California. Wow. Well, that's all I wanted to hear. So I made an agreement when I got out of the service to go to Sacramento, California and meet with the coach. Two months later, I was in California, met with the coach, and lo and behold, he says, well, we don't really have scholarships. We have work and aid. And once he explained it to me, I said, it's fine, I'll take it, but I didn't want to pay out of state tuition, and they wouldn't pay it. So they said, what we'll do, we'll get you a job part time, and in one year, you'll be a resident, and you won't have that problem of residency. So they got me a job in a sort of Memorial Hospital in the experimental heart laboratory. And it was a great job, because I was interested in medicine, right? And we worked on the hard, long hospital machine, which was new at that time, to do bypasses of the heart while they operated on the heart. And needless to say, our first operatory, the tubing on the machine blew loose, and we had blood all over the surgical room, wow. Unfortunately, the dog expired. Well, we persevered, and it worked out during that year, I got contacted by a San Jose State that they had a scholarship for me if I was interested. And I told him, Well, I've heard that story before. He said, No, no, really, we do have a scholarship. He says, One of Bill Young, who has a detective agency here in San Jose, was on a program called This Is Your Life program, and they won some money, right? And he donated it to San Jose for that boxing program, and we were awarded to you well, and housing I was in San Jose the next semester, wow. And we, we did a lot of traveling, and we, we unfortunately had to turn an NCAA tournament at University of Wisconsin, and one of our boxes. His name was Stu Bartel. He hit one of the boxes from the University of Wisconsin, and the boxer die, they cut out all college boxing. That's why you notice there's no college boxing. Well, it's because of that incident that happened in the University of Wisconsin that there's no boxing in any college anymore. Wow.
Dave Washington 9:19
So were you wearing head gear when you when you boxed in college or no?
Speaker 2 9:25
Oh yeah, I boxed. We boxed, the University of Michigan, Idaho, state, Sacramento, state, quite a few colleges and boxing at the time,
Dave Washington 9:41
but, but I'm asking you know that, I guess you call it head gear, where they wear the did
Speaker 2 9:46
you wear? I never wanted to turn pro, so once I entered college, I gave up boxing.
Dave Washington 9:56
But, but Charlie, did you guys have to wear head gear? As college boxes,
Speaker 2 10:03
but they had here. All the head gear does is protect you from cuts. Oh, not protect you from your brain slapping around in your skull. Oh, wow, which is the big problem. So boxing, basically it causes trauma to the to the head, right, right. And there's no head here that will stop that. It's almost like an egg. You shake an egg, the interior gonna slap around, right. Well, frame where you your brain does in your head.
Dave Washington 10:41
Well, so, so when it got, when a young man died, that's when they stopped boxing. Overall,
Speaker 2 10:46
all of college boxing, all of it around,
Dave Washington 10:51
what time of the was that year wise, that
Speaker 2 10:55
was, that was in 1960
Dave Washington 11:00
Okay, yeah. Interesting, interesting.
Speaker 2 11:05
One of our my teammates was Harry Campbell, who went to the Olympics with the Cassius Clay, and he lost his third fight in the Olympics, and he came home and turned professional in San Francisco, and the first fight, he got killed. Wow, brain damage. It was a sad situation,
Dave Washington 11:34
I bet, I bet, a young man and the army, like I guess, with a lot of different sports, they have their own internal group that will go to various tournaments throughout the country, throughout the world, right? So as a as a boxer, and you, you, you didn't get into the military's boxing group because they were all fooled.
Speaker 2 12:03
Well, no, I boxed. That's what I did. Once I won the Golden Gloves, I went into special services and we boxed and toured the bases and whatnot. Oh, okay, and that's how I met the coaches from California.
Dave Washington 12:22
Oh, I'm sorry I missed that part, but, man, that's very interesting that you went through your military career, first as a medic, then you got on the boxing team, right,
Speaker 2 12:33
exactly, but only because they didn't want me to be in the medical corps
Dave Washington 12:41
united and you were in the Army.
Speaker 2 12:43
I was in the army. Yeah, yeah, that's
Dave Washington 12:46
right Fort Lewis, because that's army. That's what, like I said. I served up there for a year. In fact, me and Marcia got married, and she came up and lived with me, and me here in April, we lived in a little place called telecom Telecom, right outside the base, right outside the gate, in fact. And then we used to go to the supersonic basketball games all the time. So anyway, Charlie, so can you give us an indication of what you learn that you can pass on as closing remarks to anyone out there that may be considering the military as a is a career.
Speaker 2 13:22
Well, I would just like to say that pursue your dreams, whatever they are. If you want to be a medic, then stick with it. Don't let the racist attitude prevent you from what you wanted to want to become right and persevere. And I think the military is was a good place for me to start, because I was didn't have proper direction when I was growing
Dave Washington 13:58
up, right? And where are you from, Charlie,
Speaker 2 14:02
well, I was born in the Mississippi, a little town called sunflower, and caught the the cotton train out of Mississippi to Cleveland, Ohio when I was about six years old. Wow. All right.
Dave Washington 14:19
Well, certainly I appreciate that knowledge that you're sharing and your experience while in the military, going from medical to artillery back to medical and then as a boxer. So we appreciate your service. Uncle Charlie, you take care and tell away for sure. All right, tell ain't Pat I said, Hey, what's up?
Speaker 2 14:43
I certainly will. She's saying, hey in the background. All
Dave Washington 14:46
right, my director's laughing. Producer, what's that noise in the back? Okay, thanks. Take care.
Unknown Speaker 14:53
Okay, take care. All right. Bye, bye, bye.
Dave Washington 15:03
Once again, this is Veterans Affairs, plus on 91.5 jazz and more. I had promised that I would get an update for you all our listening audience, on the Martin Luther King activities. Couldn't get the president, Mr. Wendell P Williams, former Assemblyman in our community, but I got Tanya Forson. Miss Tanya, how you doing?
Unknown Speaker 15:25
I'm doing fine. How are
Dave Washington 15:27
you I'm doing okay. Doing okay. How's how's your family doing?
Speaker 3 15:31
Our family's doing great, good going great, good, good. Happy New Year. To you, same
Dave Washington 15:37
to you, same to you and yours. Look, tell us our listening audience, a little bit about your background, your career, etc, and then we'll get into the king because we got about 1213, minutes.
Unknown Speaker 15:50
Oh gosh,
Speaker 3 15:54
I am a native of Las Vegas, born and raised right here at 89106, um, six. I went to school at Valley. I graduated and did a few things. Modeled a little bit, but my career started when I came back and I started working for the government. So I worked for the government for 34 years, and I retired about three years ago.
Dave Washington 16:23
And you said, when you came back, where did you leave here and go to? Well,
Speaker 3 16:28
I went to Fort Lauderdale. I was went to a totally different route. I was interested in fashion merchandise, yeah, so you came back and did something totally different.
Dave Washington 16:44
So you went to a fashion merchandising type school,
Unknown Speaker 16:47
yes.
Dave Washington 16:49
Oh, that's interesting. I didn't realize you had that in your background. I was aware. I thought I had seen or heard something about you modeling in the past, because you want to tall women like Marsha, you know, y'all be strolling down the lane, as they say. So, yeah, so I know your dad was a big time contractor here and built several major facilities, particularly in West Las Vegas.
Speaker 3 17:14
Yes, he, he was a, he had a forts area force and construction. And he he built Zion Methodist, he did victory, he did Second Baptist. And so he's done a lot
Dave Washington 17:32
right, right, right now, how many of children are there of your dad and mom, they had three daughters, three daughters kind of like me and Martian, right? Yeah. And then we adopted our son, Vernon Ray Washington, yeah. Cool. All right. So King, first of all, how long have you been with the committee?
Speaker 3 18:00
Oh, I've been with the committee probably about over 30 years. Over 30 I was just, I was just, yeah, I was just, I think I started with the committee in 1989 either 89 or 90, yeah.
Dave Washington 18:17
Okay, so during that time, I'm sure you've seen and heard and met a lot of different people. Tell our listening audience what was one of your greatest experience from your particular standpoint, as relates to your activity with the king committee,
Speaker 3 18:36
the one, the one that stands out the most is when President Obama attended our banquet. And I'm trying to figure out the remember the year, but it was when he was campaigning, and he came to our banquet. So that would have been one of my highlights, but I enjoy working with the parade and and I've seen it grow. And so it's just a lot of memories, but that one sticks out most in my mind. Oh, that's
Dave Washington 19:06
cool. You know, one of the things that occurred for me during my tenure as fire chief, I got to meet President Bush, I mean, the young, the Son and people was calling me, Hey, how did you get out there to meet the president? I said, because they called me, because I'm a member of a group called the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs. So they called me, and then I'm an International Association of Fire Chiefs. So the executive director called me. His name was Gary breeze. He called me, said, Dave, I'd like you to go out. Would you like to meet the President as he comes into Las Vegas on a campaign swing? I say, Yeah, but, you know, no, I don't think, no, it wasn't a campaign swing, but he was coming here for something. I don't recall what it was exactly, but I'm thinking I'm gonna be in a, you know, outstanding way back, with 300 people waving as him, and they said, no, no, you. Going to be in the line that's going to actually say welcome. You're going to be in the welcome line. And they had nine people, and I was number seven, I believe, if I remember correctly, but it came off and I said, Mr. President, I want to thank you on behalf of all the firefighters in our country for your commitment to funding for us. And he said, thank you. And people was calling, well, what did you say? What did you say? And how did you get there? It's in the county. Why didn't he call chief green? I said they called me man, and I jumped on the opportunity. In fact, I still got a picture of him, he and I shaking hands and talking, but yeah, to me, the President is something that I mentioned early on, on the first part of our show. Condolences on the loss of President Jimmy Carter. One of the things I liked about President Carter is he maintained his humanity even as president. Because sometimes I think when people get in high level positions, they kind of forget who they are and forget that they're just another fellow human beings, but just got a lot of power, if you will,
Speaker 3 21:08
right? And I was just watching the ceremony at the Capitol Building a few minutes ago, and that was a lot that was being said. Everybody that got up seemed to say the same thing is that, you know, no matter, regardless of the fact that he was the president or the former president, he never changed. He was always the same person, and he always cared about humanity,
Dave Washington 21:31
absolutely, you know. And as we were headed out of the house, Vice President Harris was speaking, and she talked about, which was so cool, how doing his campaign run, he actually stayed in the house of some of the people who were assisting him. You know, he didn't want to stay in the hotel. He and Rosalyn, they stayed with people out on the campaign trail. Which is very interesting, which I find that I would imagine that very soon, very few president, presidential candidates, if any other than him and his wife, did that. But that shows you just how he felt. He was just kind of like a common regular guy. And then I failed to realize that he was also in the military. I think it was a Navy where he was a naval officer, right? Well, Tanya, I really appreciate you, you know, because, you know, sometimes God put things in a way that you just make it work. And that's what Wes told, Wesley, you'll make it work. Yeah, yeah, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. And I know that, as you said, you know, even like doing this kind of stuff. But we really appreciate you. So please give us an update on the king Week activities, if you would, because I think it's important for us to share with our listening audience, our Las Vegas community, veterans and others who listen to this program on an ongoing basis, and we will air on this particular show. Will air this weekend. Yeah, this weekend. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 23:02
yeah, okay. Well, 7am
Dave Washington 23:06
70, so get up.
Speaker 3 23:10
Go ahead. Let's start our week off with the ultimate measure of a man, which will be on Thursday, January 16, at the West Las Vegas Library. And that's the doors will open for that at 5pm and that's all. All of this information also is going to is going to be on our website, which is www dot King week Las vegas.com so if you miss anything that I have that I've said, then you can always go to the website. Newsome is coordinating that event. And again, that's at the West Las Vegas Library, and the doors open at 5pm and that's ultimate, the ultimate measure of a man. And then on Friday, January 17, we have the annual MLK Tech Summit, and that's by invitation only, and that is for our high school students. And Mr. Wana Malone is handling that. That will be at the city hall, and that starts at nine o'clock. That's the tech queen. The tech queen, yes. And then on Friday, Friday evening, we have our interface service, and that will be at near my ministries, Christian church, and that's at 3606 North Rancho Drive, Suite 144 and Pastor Kelsey West is spearheading that, and that will be at 6:30pm
Dave Washington 24:46
Yeah, he's I can just say a couple words about he's a great young man. I know for years. He's been doing it, HBCU College tour for a number of years, and has assisted a lot of young folks getting this. School, so God bless him, and hope he continues that work. Yes.
Speaker 3 25:04
And then on Saturday, we have the 43rd annual Doctor Martin Luther King Junior scholarship banquet, and that will be held at the Orleans Hotel and Casino, and it will be in the Mardi Gras ballroom. And that's 4500 West Tropicana Avenue. And then no host cocktails begin at 6pm and the program and dinner start at seven. Okay, wonderful. And our speaker this year will be pastor Jamal Bryant, out of Atlanta. And then on Monday, we have our 43rd annual MLK parade, and that's going to be in downtown Las Vegas. The lineup begins at 8am the parade starts at 10am and just get your entry. Well, the deadline is passed for that. So it's going to be broadcast live on on ABC 13 and Vegas 34 and this year, our grand marshals are coach hunky Cooper, the director of UNLV football, player development Commissioner William McCurdy for district D, Dr Pollard from Nevada State University, the President and Dr Lisa Morris Hitler are the executive director, I'm sorry, Executive Director of the Shaquille O'Neal Foundation. And we also have two Junior grand marshals, cash Williams, ACLU, emerging leaders and cordon Allen, he's one of our young entrepreneurs. And then after the parade, you can leave from downtown and go over to Pearson Community Center for the taste of dream black food and community resource fair, and that will be from two to 5pm
Dave Washington 27:05
Wow, that is exciting. And again, the 43rd year for the parade. And as Wendell and I talked last month, I recall the first one it was, it was over in West Las Vegas. We had about, I think he said 13 entries, and I we had a fire truck, and that was a, the biggest, well, the most notable, you know, entry in the parade. But I think that that really got us started. And wow, our time flies 40. It's the 43rd parade coming up, and one of the largest ones, as I recall in the United States of America, that is great. So Tanya,
Speaker 3 27:45
I'm sorry I forgot one. I forgot one thing our young DREAMers awards this year. We're doing something different. We usually have it at Second Baptist Church, and we honor all of our we honor you that attend schools that are named after African Americans here in city and nationally, this year, we're doing something different. The students are going to be featured on news 13 and on social media throughout the week. So they won't we won't have a we won't be in an actual building, but be a part of the event as well. Next week.
Dave Washington 28:26
Excellent, excellent. Give your website again as we close our West gave me that was about a minute ago that we had two minutes give the website. And we really appreciate you coming on with such short notice.
Speaker 3 28:38
Okay, the website is www dot King week Las vegas.com,
Dave Washington 28:46
Las Vegas. I want to thank Miss Tanya Forson, who came on in very, very short notice to fill in and give us some background information on the activities of King week. So thank you so much, Tanya.
Speaker 3 28:59
You're welcome. Nice face,
Dave Washington 29:03
sure. Well, once again, this is Veterans Affairs, plus on 91.5 jazz and more. And thank you. Wes once again for keeping me on track, and you said we could do it. Talk to you soon. You
Outro Song 29:46
all the smoke in the air till they hate when they stare all the pain that we bear.