A Seat at the Table
Charles Romans
The Ashland Beacon
“I had it bad growing up,” Eugene Brown said of his childhood. “And when I got away from that I came into town (Greenup), and one of my neighbors said why don’t you get a job with the railroad?” Brown said he remembered telling the neighbor that he was just a kid and thought that the railroad wouldn’t hire him. “But they were hiring anyone that came along. Because the war was on, and they didn’t know how many men would still be working tomorrow. They hired me. And I helped lay that rail from what they called the Old Mill down to the Locks and Dam.”
It was while working for the railroad that the joining the service first occurred to Brown. “I was seventeen and there were boys a couple of years older than me who started talking about how they were going into the service. Some of them got into the Marine Corp. They came home on furlough wearing those sharp uniforms, but they had to buy the suit themselves. I thought I might want that suit too, but I was only making a dollar a day and couldn’t afford it,” explained Brown.
Brown said that because of this, he decided to enlist in the regular army. When it came time to ship out, Brown encountered other difficulties. There was flooding in Greenup, and where he lived in Oldtown it was about 12 miles to the city. “I made it as far as that bridge on Route 2. Water was everywhere, but because I had to be on the troop train the next day, they sent a man in a rowboat all the way from Greenup to that bridge and rode back to Greenup with him. That night I stayed in a little place that hadn’t flooded yet,” recalled Brown.
The following morning, Brown and four other young men were loaded onto state highway department trucks and driven through the flooded roads to catch the troop train. From there, he went to a processing station in Indiana for initial training. Then it was off to Fort Benning for Paratrooper training. “It wasn’t long after training that I found myself in France, headed into Germany,” Brown said. For the next 18 months, he served honorably until his discharge.
Though many decades have passed since his time in Germany—decades filled with marriage and raising a family—Brown’s service to his country has not been forgotten. Veterans from all eras are still honored, and this year on Veterans Day, Brown went to the local Golden Corral, where veterans receive special discounts. “The line was long,” Brown said. “At 97, I wasn’t sure if I could stand in line that long, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to worry.”
“The nicest fella you ever seen, he looked like a redneck like the rest of us, came up to me when I got out of the car.” Brown said the two began talking while his son parked the car, and Brown shared, “He took me by the arm and walked me up to the front of the line. And that big crowd, well all of them stepped back out of the way for me.”
Brown said the friendly stranger, whose name he still doesn’t know, led him to one of the people working at the front and asked where he could seat Brown. The friendly staff pointed out a place, and within minutes Brown was comfortably seated. “Everyone was very nice and courteous to me,” Brown said. “And even though I don’t know who he was, I’m sure glad that he was there because I don’t think I could have stood in that long a line.” After helping him to a seat, Brown said the man left and went back, he assumed, to get in line himself. “They say nobody will help you in America anymore,” Brown said. “But I think to myself that what he did was a little dab of America right there.”
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