Walt Brown - Military Career and Education

Military Career and Education

During World War II, at the age of seventeen, June 15, 1944, Brown enlisted for active duty in the United States Navy as a Seaman First Class. After eleven months of school in radio technician school, Brown was promoted to Radio Technician Second Class and assigned to an amphibious ship USS Carter Hall, stationed in Shanghai, China. In June 1946, he was honorably discharged and enlisted into the inactive Naval Reserve. Utilizing the G.I. Bill, (September 1946 to January 1952), he attended the University of Southern California, earning a B.A. (law) in June 1949 (cum laude), and a J.D. in 1952. He was a Rhodes Scholar nominee and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

In the spring of 1952, Brown was called back to military duty to serve in the Korean War.

After twenty-six years of naval service, during which time he served as a public defender; an advocate for military men with service related disabilities that were fighting the government for denied disability coverage; a trial prosecutor; an appellate criminal attorney in Washington, D.C.; an instructor at the U.S. School of Naval Justice in Rhode Island; a legal officer for the U.S. Naval Station in the Philippines; and a general court martial judge in San Diego, California, he retired with the rank of Commander in the JAG Corps, United States Navy in 1970.

Brown studied Constitutional Law at Harvard. In 1961, he received an MA from Boston University, and an MLS from the University of Oregon School of Librarianship in 1975.