Veterans Day: Donald Brown

Dec. 7, 1956 to Dec. 4, 1958

Army Corps of Engineers

Private First Class

Donald Edward Brown joined the Army Corps of Engineers in December 1956, and he completed his basic training and advanced training at Fort Ord, California.

He then spent 16 months in Darmstadt, West Germany, as part of the 95th Engineer Battalion.

Brown was among the troops of two battalions that teamed up and drove south to Speyer, West Germany.

There, he said, “We assembled 79 pontoons, with bridge sections, to span the Rhine River … to the other shore, and then tore the bridge down.”

In 1958, Brown joined up with two friends and drove through Germany, Switzerland, Spain and France, and took a steamer to Morocco.

When he got out of the Army in December 1958, Brown remembers riding a bicycle from Oakland to Bakersfield in four days.

Bicycling was a lifelong interest for Brown. As a teenager, he worked as a bicycle messenger in downtown Los Angeles, and he estimates that he put in about 10,000 miles on a one-speed bike in one year.

While in Germany, Brown shipped a three-speed bicycle from Darmstadt back to the San Francisco Bay area. The first 10-speeds came to Los Angeles in 1959, he said.

After leaving the Army, Brown joined the 15-member Los Angeles Wheelmen Club and was part of the effort of building up the club to 250 members.

Brown, who was born in Hollywood in 1934, was an avid cyclist for 57 years.


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