Chulie & Kenya Ralph G Brown
February 1, 2009
The "Ralph Brown Journal" is the second of two blogs that I have. It will be mostly personal and limited to the members of the Ralph G. and Melva Lee (Nena) Brown family and invited friends, whereas the first blog, "Valley Of The Mist" will be open to the world.
We have five children. Two sons and three daughters. Melva Lee Brown (Nena), my wife, passed away about ten years ago and our oldest son, Ralph Douglas Brown, passed away in 2000. He was only 48 years old.
Charisse Brown is our oldest daughter and lives with me in Mesa, Arizona. I have lived in this house for 38 years and Charisse has lived here for about 25 years. She is an RN and a school nurse.
Shelley Brown Riley, our second daughter, and her husband, Tracy Riley, have three children and have lived in Queen Creek for about seven years. They moved here from Portland, Oregon.
Daniel Brown moved from Mesa, AZ to Silver City, New Mexico, in 1989 and then to El Paso about two years later. They have three children, all married and all have had one child each. Daniel married a wonderful girl, Lisa Matta, in 2004. Lisa has one son. It was a second marriage for both of them.
Suzan M Brown Scott married Tom Scott in 1985 and moved to Coolidge, very soon after that. They have two children, A girl, Rachelle, a senior in high school and Thomas a sophomore in college. Neither one of them have married yet. Tom is a business partner with his Father. They own the Case-International equipment Co. in Coolidge and another equipment company in Maricopa, AZ.
Melva Lee and I were married December 27, 1951 in the Arizona Temple. We spent the first half of the fifties at Holoman Air Force Base in Alamorgordo, New Mexico and Eielson Air Force Base, just out of Fairbanks, Alaska. We returned home to Queen Creek in 1955 and soon after that was asked by Apostle Henry D Moyle to take our family to Melbourne, Florida and establish the position of administrative assistant and to take over the office of a 300,000 acre plus cattle ranch for the Church. The fifties were good to us. My first assignment was to fly to Salt Lake City to become aquainted with persons working in the accounting department and to meet the Presiding Bishopric and then to gather up the accounting records and ship them to the Ranch in Florida. This turned ot be a very interesting assignment
We returned home in Mesa about ten months early from the ranch because Dan's doctor told us to get him back into a dry climate before he could heal from an infection that he had in his throat.
The sixties turned out to be loaded with adversity for our family. We moved several times trying to get re-established and In 1969 we decided to return to Mesa. We were beaten and discouraged. However, soon after arriving back in Mesa I received an offer to go to work for Holo-met. It turned out to be a blessing. I was making a good salary again and rapidly rose to be in charge of three hollow metal factories. They were Holo-met in Mesa, Atlas Universal in San Francisco and Midland Steel just out of Oklahoma City.
Soon after being put in charge of the hollow metal factories the CEO of Chesapeake industries, who owned the hollow metal factories asked me to move to San Francisco and help move the home office from Silver Springs, Maryland to San Francisco and take over the office there. It was at a time when the Hippie movement was well established there and I had seen how corrupt they were. It seemed that they were every where. I felt that I could not put my family in that environment so I had no choice but to turn down the offer to move to San Francisco.
This will be post number one. I hope that, as time goes on, I will be able to work in interesting parts of my life history along with glances at my business knowledge, my political views, my religous views and anything that I think would be an interesting and insightful record.
Submitted by Ralph G Brown.
