Much is changed since he joined Navy

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, May 29, 2005

WASHINGTON – In his 103 years, Lloyd Brown has learned these life lessons: Help out with the dirty work, be fair to your colleagues and follow the rules. But Brown will be honored today because he broke the rules.

Brown is one of the nation’s last veterans of World War I. He will ride in the National Memorial Day Parade as a living testament to the 4.7 million U.S. servicemen of the Great War.

Brown was eager to join the Allied cause in 1918, but he was only 16, so he fibbed about his age. His Maryland driver’s license still lists 10-7-99 – that’s 1899 – as his birth date, instead of the correct 1901.

“Everybody was patriotic; everybody wanted to join,” he said. “Those who joined were local heroes, well received on the public streets.”

It didn’t hurt, he added with a grin, that the boys in uniform were popular with the girls.

Brown is one of 30 World War I veterans still living, according to an unofficial estimate kept by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The son of a Missouri stonemason, Brown battled Spanish flu in Philadelphia, played cello in Australia as a member of a Navy admiral’s orchestra, served as a firefighter for the District of Columbia, and sold antique clocks and furniture in Charlotte Hall, Md., where he lives now.

He has survived six brothers, two sisters, two wives and one son.

From a rocking chair in his living room, Brown recalled patrolling the North Atlantic aboard the USS New Hampshire, watching for enemy submarines. He described with scientific precision how he learned to splice ropes.

Brown re-enlisted after the war as a musician on the USS Seattle, traveling to Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia.

Brown lives alone, but he has regular visits from Meals on Wheels and his daughter, 65-year-old Nancy Espina, who checks on him every day.

“As long as I’ve got plenty of food and relatives nearby, I never get too lonely,” he said.

He prefers corn flakes to eggs or ham and devours apple and lemon meringue pies. He does not apologize for puffing on a pipe, a habit since he was a kid.

“I don’t inhale the smoke, therefore the smoke doesn’t get in my lungs at all,” he said.

He keeps the hours of a teenager, watching television news programs until after midnight and sleeping past noon. Last month, he jetted to Daytona Beach, Fla., to visit family and friends.

Although he has a driver’s license, Brown favors the golf cart parked in front of his mint green cottage. He drives to the end of the gravel driveway to pick up the mail and has been known to cross busy Highway 5 to visit the shopping plaza, despite warnings from local law enforcement officers.

In the past six months, Brown began using a walker when the hip that he broke nine years ago started bothering him again.

“I don’t consider it a long life,” Brown said. “I feel as though there are a lot of people around my age.”

A few minutes later, Brown remembered that he has outlived the magazine he used to receive for World War I veterans. It stopped publishing a few years ago.

“World War I people are getting scarce,” he said. “Nothing can be done about that.”