Street roots., May 15, 2015, Page 4, Image 4

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Page 4
Street Roots • May 15-21,2015
Casting
into
deeper
waters
How a gang member
from Texas came to lead
groups o f in n er city
kids a n d veterans on
fly-fishing adventures
BY E M ILY GREEN
ST A FF W R IT ER
had Brown stood waist deepen the ,
brisk current of the Clackamas River,
just a few hundred yards upstream of
the ^Estacada Bridge. On this'tefhp'eYate
midsummer afternoon in 2010, he was
casting his line for trout. As the rapids
gently washed up against the sides of his
waterproof waders, he contemplated what it
all meant, and how to put into words the
emerging endeavor that seemed to be the
perfect culmination of his past 39 years.
“Soul river runs deep,” he thought to
himself. He had found his answer.
A few months earlier, Brown was ,
dangerously close to taking his life with the
pull of a trigger. After losing everything he
had worked for as the result of his long-
fought battle with PTSD - the byproduct of
time served in Operation DesertStorm and
Operation Restore Hope - he was ready to
give up.
But then he discovered fly fishing, and
that changed everything.
On this fateful day on the river, he was
thinking about the future. It was there he
had finally found relief from his crippling
merital anguish, and he knew he could help
others do the same.
Fast forward five years and today Brown,
is focused on raising enough funds to take a
couple dozen inner city kids up to southern
Alaska’s picturesque Kenai Peninsula for a
fly fishing adventure with a handful of war
veterans,
The summer of 2015 will be his second
season of connecting urban youth and
veterans with nature through his favorite
sport He now operates a small, stylish fly­
fishing boutique in North Portland’s Kenton
neighborhood, Called Soul River Runs Deep,
and sales from the store help support his
nonprofit, Soul River Inc/
Brown says his business and nonprofit
work together to sustain his peace of mind
and teach others how to the same.
“It’s a way of connecting to youth,” Brown
B
P H O TO BY Ó IEG O D IA Z
says, “whoare fighting for their lives in
underserved communities, and Veterans,
who are fighting for their acceptance in
society again after what they have come
through with PTSD.”
Born and raised in Texas, Brown was the
product of a broken home, a reality that he
says troubled him deeply. As a teenager, he
joined up with the Latino gangs that hung
out in his corner of Austin. He started
getting, into street fights and committing
robberies.
A mentor from his childhood eventually
stepped in and straightened him out. Capt.
Freddie Maxwell with the Austin Police
Department, or “Captain Maxwell” as Brown
knew him, picked him up and threw him in
jail to teach him a lesson. The police officer
had been his big brother in the Big Brothers
Big Sisters program a few years earlier.
Brown was not officially under arrest, but he
got the message, and eventiially finished
high school and then enrolled in the Art
Institute of Dallas.
“I had always been into art and design,”
says Brown. Despite his gang affiliations and
troublesome ways, his mothèr had always
made it à point toexposehim and his
younger brother to thé arts, taking them to
the symphony and theater, and encouraging
his interest'in drawing. But before Brown
earned his bachelor’s degree, he had to
drop out for financial reasons. Out of money
and out of options, he joined the U.S. Navy.
“I was actually anti-military at th e time,
but I needed to survive and I didn’t w an tto '
go back home,” he says, “and that was really
the only option that I had.”
It was a decision that took him around
the globe to 14 countries and into two wars.
He won’t go into detail about his time .
fighting in Somalia and Kuwait, he only says
he experienced extreme environments and
lost some people he really cared about.
Once discharged, he used his GI Bill
funding to finish his bachelor’s degree at
American InterContinental University in
Atlanta, Ga., and then went on to earn a
graduate degree at the Pratt Institute in
Brooklyn, From there he worked a string of
prestigious jobs at various design and
advertising agencies in New York City, and
See DEEPER WATERS, page 5