Brown Named DES At USMA

HAMPTON — He was born in Exeter, grew up in Hampton, earned Masters degrees at colleges in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, has served in the Army in Korea, Saudi Arabia and Germany, and calls West Point his home.

He’s Lt. Col. Bob C. Brown, and he was recently promoted to the position of Director of Emergency Services (DES) at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.

The 47-year-old emergency services director oversees this new Installation Management Agency organization, of which the provost marshal, contract security guards and the fire department are now all a part.

Previously, the provost marshal office ran as its own entity, the contract guards were managed by the 1st Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, and the fire department was under the directorate of public works.

Consolidating all three entities under one directorate umbrella has helped to streamline the way the majority of emergency situations are handled throughout the community.

According to comments he provided to the US Military Academy’s publication “Pointer View,” Brown says that the “efficiencies gained by consolidation allows for better management of the emergency response team because it helps establish a camaraderie across the different departments. It allows us to co-locate our emergency dispatch centers and the efficiencies gained by that allow us to cut time off our responses.”

This is not the first directorate that Brown has organized; this past March near the end of his seven-year hitch in Germany, he created a DES for a new organization (namely the US Army Garrison-Franconia) by combining the 98th Area Support Group PMO in Wuerzburg with the 417th Base Support Battalion.

In between earning degrees in law enforcement, criminal justice and police administration, Brown has served as an enlisted MP (military police), a game warden, security official, and security advisor — the latter in conjunction with the Saudi Arabian National Guard’s Special Battalion, the unit charged with guarding the crown prince of that Middle Eastern country.

The son of Agnes Brown and the late Maurice Brown of Hampton, Brown lives with his wife Teri and youngest son Patric, a high school student at West Point (older son Bradley is a freshman at the University of New Hampshire in Durham). Brown’s mother and his sister, Sheree, still reside in Hampton.

Brown, who joined the ROTC program while a student at St. Anselm College in Manchester, is currently sponsoring six plebes attending the United States Military Academy through the Fourth Class Sponsorship Program. He says he loves what the USMA is all about — training, leadership, preparing cadets to become commissioned lieutenants — and loves supporting the academy as well.

West Point’s new emergency services director is also active as a soccer and baseball coach, and is a firm believer in spending a lot of time volunteering and getting involved in the community.

“I always want to give something back to the community,” Lt. Col. Brown told “Pointer View,” adding “I think that ties in with being a public servant – helping people and then providing the security so they can live in an environment that is safe and secure to live, work and play in.”