When Thomas Brown was a boy in Old Greenwich walking to school with his identical twin brother, Mike, they”™d pass a firehouse “and we”™d peek in every once in a while, out of curiosity.” Now, his curiosity satisfied, he”™s inside a firehouse as a firefighter, looking out instead of in and helping fulfill his inner drive to serve his community. “My parents instilled in us that it”™s important to help others,” he said simply.
His parents also knew the importance of surrounding Thomas and Mike with positive male role models who would strengthen and support the values the boys learned at home, and introduced the twins to what was then the Boys Club ”“ now the Boys and Girls Club. “My dad knew it was a good place for young men, that it was a safe place to be while my parents were at work,” Brown said. “We learned how to play sports and how to respect people. We learned good values.”
Now Brown himself is a role model and mentor for pre-teens at the Stamford Boys and Girls Club, encouraging them “to reach their full potential and become productive, caring and responsible citizens,” he said, paraphrasing the club”™s mission statement. “I learned good values from the Boys Club, and I think that my experience there helped make me who I am today.”
And he”™s hoping to pass along that positive experience to as many children as possible. “Children need important role models and mentors, and that”™s what my goal is,” he said. “I”™m just giving back to the community what I have learned from my parents and the Boys Club as a youth. I want to make sure kids have people who care for them and want to do right by them.”
A long process
Brown grew up in Old Greenwich, graduating from Greenwich High School in 1976 and attending Springfield College in Springfield, Mass., where he began his studies to become a teacher. “I thought it was an honorable profession, to teach and serve others,” he said of teaching. And because he was active in sports and athletics, he thought he”™d like to coach school athletics as well.
But his finances ran out and he returned home to Old Greenwich, worked as a substitute teacher in Stamford “and worked in physical therapy a little bit.” Eventually, he said, he joined the Stamford fire department in 1985. Teaching was becoming a bit wobbly as a career because public school enrollments were declining “and education wasn”™t that attractive because the jobs weren”™t there,” he said. “So I looked around for what else I could do.”
He didn”™t have to look too far. “I had been a volunteer fireman in the Sound Beach Volunteer Fire Department since about 1978” when he was 20 years old, and parlayed that background and experience in Greenwich to his new career. He had been certified as an emergency medical technician in 1984 and was involved with the Greenwich ambulance corps, attending patients during emergency trips to the hospital. He had applied to be a firefighter in Stamford “around 1981 or 82,” he said. “It”™s a pretty long process.”
Brown isn”™t part of the separate ambulance corps at the Stamford fire department, “but we administer care until the paramedics show up and take over,” he said. “We all have our niches, so we do what we can.”
Proudest moment
Firemen, Brown said, sometimes drink a lot of coffee, and coffee makers sometimes supply firehouses with product samples. On the can of one coffee sampler “it said that some of the proceeds from the coffee”™s sale would go to the Connecticut Burns Care Foundation to help support a camp,” he said. “I needed to find out more about the camp.” He discovered that it was for children who have suffered severe burns and were given a free, week-long camping experience at the foundation”™s 176-acre campground in Union.
“I applied to be a counselor and was accepted in 1993, and I”™ve been doing it ever since,” Brown said. “There are probably 90 counselors, firefighters, nurses from burn units, some physical therapy people, but the majority are firefighters” to help create the camping experience for the 50 to 60 children.
“The criteria for the camper are that he or she has to have been severely burned,” he said. Those burns “can be very graphic. We have kids who have no fingers or ears or hair. The first time I was there was very difficult. I had never experienced anything like that before, but after one or two days I realized these kids are just kids. When you get away from the scars, they”™re just kids who want to have fun, be nurtured and be loved. Often they are shunned by society, and they don”™t have the opportunity to have normal lives.”
Through the years “the chief of my department as been very supportive of the camp,” Brown said, “and gives me time to go for the one week.” In fact, “probably one of my proudest moments, and it still is, is when I was named Firefighter of the Year in 1998” because of his volunteering at the camp, and was nominated with one of the campers to go to Washington, D.C., to be honored by the International Firefighters Association for his involvement. “We got to go to the White House, the Smithsonian ”“ great things for the kids.”
Trio of master”™s
Brown”™s early sputter at Springfield College didn”™t discourage him from pursuing his education once he had the finances in place. “I went back to school and got my associate”™s degree in therapeutic reactions from Norwalk Community College in 1994, and an associate degree in fire science and technology from the college in 2000. He earned his bachelor”™s degree in 1997, a master”™s degree in public administration in 2003, another master”™s degree, in labor relations, in 2004, and a master”™s in fire science in 2006. “I was in the municipal government and wanted to find out more about how it works; I was always fascinated with the relationship between management and labor, and fire science is what I do,” he said about his trio of master”™s degrees. “Right now I”™m in a certification program at the University of New Haven for the management of public safety, basically learning about the management of public safety organizations in municipalities.”
One of his goals, he said, is to teach at the college level, “probably fire science.” Retirement from the fire department is still a few years away, but “I”™m kind of setting myself up for my next career,” teaching at either a community or four-year college. “There may be some opportunities at the University of New Haven, but a lot of community colleges have fire science programs at the associate”™s level that I could teach.”
In the meantime, he”™ll continue volunteering at the Stamford Boys and Girls Club, where “I do whatever they need me to do,” he said. “I can adapt myself to what the need is” because “it”™s important that the kids have good adult role models, and one of my goals is to be that, to help them make the right decisions and do the right things when they become adults.”
Depending on his work schedule, Brown shows up at the center two or three days a week for three to four hours each day. “I”™m at the stage in my life where I want to give back even more.”
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