I've written more than one post about my second cousin once removed, SP5 Michael P. Brown. I don't think I've ported any of them from my old blog site to this new one. They'll get here eventually though. So I'm back home in Pennsylvania on vacation and my husband and sons went to Washington D.C for a day and night. It's been 10 years since the boys and I have been there so it was long past time. One of the things I wanted to do was to visit the Vietnam Memorial Wall and find my cousin.
Traffic was terrible which is unsurprising. Parking was also a nightmare which did surprise me, so we didn't stay as long as we would have liked. I did get to the memorial. He is at panel 30E, 88. It was a rather rushed visit because we had to leave. I wish I could have stayed longer. I was a little disappointed at how quickly we had to go, but it was still a mission accomplished so I tried to put a cheerful light on it.
The next morning the spouse was asking us what we wanted to do before heading back up to the Poconos. The boys didn't want to do a darned thing. After the traffic nightmare they just wanted to go back to grandma and grandpa's. In true husband fashion though he wanted us to do something. Otherwise we weren't getting the most out of our trip. We stayed at a hotel on Fort Meade so we decided to go to the National Cryptologic Museum (NCM) which was close. My husband and I were both Military Intelligence Soldiers. He loves cryptography and he's so much better at it than I am. I enjoy finding out about the codes and ciphers, I just don't have the patience for it as I should. So going to the NCM sounded cool to all of us, but I was to receive a surprise that made my day!
You might be saying "big deal!" I'll admit I almost just walked past it. My husband pointed to a name and said, "I knew him." That's when I asked myself if I could possibly know anyone on there. There weren't a lot of names so why not look...
Michael Brown is a fairly common name, but knowing he was in signals intelligence and they had the same middle initial and the rank I felt that it was too many coincidences not to be my Michael. So I checked their website and it's him! Not only was it him, but there was a link to a two page PDF on the story of SP5 Michael Brown, SGT Diego Ramirez Jr., and MSG Robert Taylor and how they lost their lives in Vietnam. And here they are. Together. On a small memorial in the National Cryptologic Museum that I almost missed and almost didn't visit.
You can read about their story and their sacrifice here.
Comments