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Community members and family gathered at the 1st Armored Division Chapel to honor Curtis Lee Brown Monday, Aug. 10, 2026.<\/p>\nEL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — Monday, the 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss and family honored El Paso community leader and retired Command Sergeant Major Curtis Lee Brown. He died at the age of 101.<\/p>\n
Brown made history in 1960 as one of the first African Americans promoted to Command Sergeant Major in the Army, according to Fort Bliss. <\/p>\n
Community members and family gathered at the 1st Armored Division Chapel to honor Curtis Lee Brown Monday, Aug. 10, 2026.<\/p>\n
He had a 32-year military career that started in 1943 in Little Rock, Arkansas, according to his obituary. <\/p>\n
His service spanned from the Berlin Airlift, leading more than 10,000 personnel at the 94th Air and Missile Command to developing a curriculum for the United States Army Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss.<\/p>\n
After retiring in 1975, Brown continued his role as a civic leader in El Paso for more than 50 years, Fort Bliss said. He started a second career at Casa Ford, where he later became the general sales manager. <\/p>\n
Originally from Dierks, Arkansas, Brown made his mark in the Sun City in many different ways. At 99 years old, he worked on Mayor Renard Johnson’s mayoral campaign.<\/p>\n
Brown also put time into several organizations in El Paso, including the city’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).<\/p>\n
“He was always about leadership,” retired Army Command Sergeant Major Reggie Daniel said. “He loved his country. He loved his people, and he definitely loved his family.”<\/p>\n
Brown’s obituary noted his love for baseball. In 1949, he tried out for the Chicago Cubs and made the team. <\/p>\n
“I told the manager of the Cubs that I just wanted to see if I could make the team \u2014 I really wanted to be a soldier,” Brown said.<\/p>\n
Daniel said Brown loved the Los Angeles Dodgers. In his last moments, he received merchandise from the team’s manager.<\/p>\n
“He was always about leadership. And he loved his country. He loved his people, and he definitely loved his family.”<\/p>\n
Daniel met Brown at one of his birthdays. His high energy and “fired-up” personality stuck with Daniel the most. <\/p>\n
“He just talked to me just like we had known each other for years,” he said.<\/p>\n
Daniel said one of Brown’s last words to him were that he wished they served in the military together.<\/p>\n
“I told him, ‘We did,'” Daniel said. “Because you were my mentor, and you led the way.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — Monday, the 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss and family honored El Paso community…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[141318,138,140,139,5032,2672],"class_list":["post-403291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-curtis-lee-brown","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-fort-bliss","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}