WASHINGTON, DC – Two Darke County brothers, both U.S. Army veterans, met up for the first time in more than two years at the National Museum of the United States Army, located at Fort Belvoir, VA, just outside Washington, D.C.
Mark (Brownie) Brown, a 1977 graduate of Versailles High School, and Dave Brown, a 1988 Versailles alum, met for the first time since the passing of their father.
“It’s been two years,” said Mark. “We don’t get to see each other like we love to … and it’s been great.”
Mark made the trip to Washington, DC, as part of the annual Darke County Veterans Services trip to our nation’s capital and informed his “baby brother” that he, along with the Darke County veterans, would be at the Army museum from 12:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. on Friday.
“Mark sent me a text earlier this week and said the Darke County Veterans were coming,” Dave noted. “I’m like, well, where are you going to be, He said, ‘We are going to be here, here, and here.’ I said I work just down the road from here, so I said I’ll just meet up with you, I’ll just cut out from work and meet up with you here, and we’ll hang out for a couple of hours.”
The younger brother, Dave, served in the United States Marine Corps for 10 1/2 years, then took a six-year break before joining the US Army National Guard.
“It’s been good because I don’t get back to Ohio very often,” Dave said of the brother’s two-hour reunion. “Usually, if I am going to take a vacation now, I like to go see things so I don’t make my way back there as often as I should, so when Mark texted, I was, come on, we’ll figure something out. We got to spend two hours together.”
“It was so good to see Dave after so much time,” Mark concluded.
