McKeesport veteran, retired postal worker now serving kids as school crossing guard
Arnold Brown transitioned from a witness of the Cold War to a protector of the neighborhood’s youngest generation.
By JENNIFER MCCALLA
McKeesport Community Newsroom
Arnold Brown’s thumb moves across his phone screen, past decades of faces, places and moments. Each photo is a breadcrumb in a life spent serving his country, his city and now the children who cross Cornell Street every morning.
At 83, he scrolls with the same steady patience he once used to track aircraft over the Berlin Corridor, recalling frequencies and altitudes with precision.
“I remember everything,” Brown says, not bragging, just stating a fact. “Time flew by, you know? But I remember.”
Brown is a crossing guard at Twin Rivers Elementary School in McKeesport, a role he took on after retirement from being a U.S. Postal Service worker left him restless. Brown is the rare kind of older man who is positive, upbeat and genuinely interested in life and others. He’s full of enthusiasm and enjoys being active. The world around him has changed, but Brown remains a steady fixture in the Mon Valley, transitioning from a witness of the Cold War to a protector of the neighborhood’s youngest generation.
The job keeps him moving, keeps him connected, keeps him active and keeps him busy.
For example, he said he’s found that the recently enrolled Ecuadorian students have been particularly respectful, and he has come to truly appreciate them. Kids wave to him and fist bump him as they cross to enter the school. He watches over them with the same quiet vigilance he once used to watch the skies.
His path to this crosswalk began more than six decades ago.
In 1961, Brown’s “office” was a mountainside in Germany. Stationed with the U.S. Air Force, he worked radar under a massive dome, identifying aircraft navigating the Berlin air corridors. (The narrow air corridors that allowed Allied planes to reach West Berlin through Soviet-controlled territory.)
“It was our job with the radar to identify all the planes that came through there,” Brown recalls.
It was high-stakes work, but Brown found his true rhythm on the court.
After playing for the Ramstein Rams, Brown was a standout athlete in the USAFE (United States Air Force in Europe) district. Yellowed clippings from the base newspaper describe him as a “big gun” in the Rams’ attack, frequently racking up 22 points per game in high-scoring exhibitions. A grainy black-and-white photo shows Brown, wearing number 24, suspended in mid-air for a layup, a frozen moment of athleticism during a tense era of global history.
Before Germany, there was tech school in Biloxi, Miss. Brown still remembers wearing his Air Force uniform and being forced to buy a bus ticket at the back of the Greyhound station because of his skin color.
“I’m serious,” Brown said, “I couldn’t even go inside.”
In Germany, prejudice followed.
“You’d go to a bar, and if you were Black, you had to go down to the basement and drink,” he said. “It wasn’t the Germans. It was the white GIs.”
“I can’t forget it,” Brown recalled of the frequent discrimination he endured. “But I don’t hold no one responsible. What am I gonna do?”
When he returned to Pittsburgh, Brown didn’t just live in the city, he helped build it. He worked as a laborer on the construction of the U.S. Steel Tower, the 64-story monolith that still defines the Pittsburgh skyline.
“I was a carpenter’s helper, carrying the supplies and the nails,” Brown said. “I didn’t get too close to the edge, I was on the top!”
He eventually found stability at Westinghouse Air Brake, where he worked for 18 years until the shifting economy of the 1980s led to systematic layoffs.
Brown needed to provide for his family, so after the layoffs he bought a study book, aced the civil service exam, and began a 20-year career with the U.S. Postal Service.
Brown retired from the post office in 2005, but the quiet didn’t suit him. “I went stir crazy,” he admits. “I couldn’t sit home and do nothing!”
Brown remains a bridge between Pittsburgh’s industrial past and its future.
Kelly Britcher, a colleague of Brown’s at Propel McKeesport, recalled the quiet impact he had on those around him.
“He was always so nice. Brown made coming to school feel personal. He always asked how I was, and when I asked him, he’d smile and say he had ‘nothing to complain about.’” Brown once gave Britcher advice about a supplement to take, she said.
“That always stuck with me,” she said. It made me feel like he saw the bigger picture. He was kind and personable, and I got the sense he had so many more stories to tell than we ever had time for.”
His greatest pride, however, is his family. He speaks highly of his son, his daughter in law, a teacher, and his three grandchildren, who are all straight-A students and hardworking. Then there is his 11-year-old grandson, whom he affectionately calls a “pain in the neck.”
“He gets even with me,” Brown says, laughing. “I’m getting paid back from me messing with him.” Brown laughs, recounting how his youngest grandson teases him about “new math” or sneaks the family Labradoodle into his bed to wake him up with a “sandpaper” tongue.
Brown scrolls again, stopping at a photo of that same grandson as a newborn. “He was only an hour old,” he says softly. “And look at him now.”
He shakes his head, smiling at the screen, at the years, at the life he’s lived.
Jennifer McCalla, of West Mifflin, is a writer and photographer. She is a member of Tube City Writers, a program of the McKeesport Community Newsroom.
