Algernon Brown

Deacon, Fourth Baptist Church
B. 1925

I was baptized here 76 years ago. I’ve always been in attendance since my parents brought me in their arms.

I was a student, teacher, counselor, assistant principal, principal, and school board. I’m in my 20th year in the airport commission.

My mother married my dad when she was 15. My father had seizures, a few nights a week and sometimes during the day, ‘cause he had bullets in his brain—he had been shot in his eye accidentally by his brother. I remember watching him biting his tongue. Evidently we’d been trained just to stand there. If tears came, they came.

After her divorce, my mother was on a trip and the bus had an accident. We were told that she was going to pass. She lived to be 80, but she wasn’t able to work. My dad couldn’t hold a job, so I became at 12 the breadwinner.

[My friend] James’s mother would leave her two sons in April and would go to Virginia Beach for her job and she would not return until October. They had to earn their keep. James and I operated an elevator from 3:30-9:00. We were only off every other Sunday. You know what we earned for those 13 evenings? Nine dollars. He worked in the Prestwould. I worked in what is now part of VCU, which was Monroe Terrace. The maids would sneak us dinners. We got good food every day.

I was drafted into the Navy, and when I came back, my mother had remarried and moved out somewhere. So I haven’t lived here since I was 18, which was 71 years ago.