Mike Brown was born in
Montgomery, Alabama nine months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. His
mother, Dorothy S. Brown had watched the Japanese planes fly over her
home when it happened. His parents divorced sometime after his sister,
Lani, was born. The family moved to various places while his mother
worked towards obtaining a Ph.D. in English.
Mike got to be too much
to handle for his mother when he was sixteen. She sent him to Arkansas
where her father had a horse farm. Mike set up his room in an old
turkey brooder house and his facilities consisted of an outhouse.
In Arkansas the farm
kids didn’t master the written language very well. Most of them paid
Mike to write their senior
theme papers. The teacher thought he had written at least five of them
and she asked him point blank how many had he had written. He told her
twenty-eight.
Arkansas in the early
sixties was no place for a high school graduate to make a decent living
so Mike joined the Army.
He served from 1960-1964 in the 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne
divisions. His experiences in the service taught him the reality of
being a soldier and gave him an understanding of how military
operations work which cannot be found by just reading a book on the
subject.
In 1967 Mike married
Lani Maisterra. Together they have had nine children and now six
grandchildren.
Mike has written quite
a few articles and books in the last twenty-six years. Here is a
partial list of them:
