Sportscaster James Brown discusses his
memoir, Role of a Lifetime
Sports broadcasting icon and native Washingtonian James Brown discussed his memoir Role of a Lifetime: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Significant Living this past Thursday at Bethesda’s Barnes and Noble Booksellers.
Brown, host of CBS’ The NFL Today and Showtime’s Inside the NFL, regaled a packed room with stories from his spiritual memoir that underscores a life of Providence, good parenting, and a good family. Brown wrote the book, he said, to impart messages to young people who were not as fortunate to come from a great family as he was. One such message is that “there is no shortcut to success in the game of life.” Such lessons in the book are recitations of what his parents, John and Mary Ann Brown, had taught him.
The title of the book, said Brown, is “a tribute, quite simply, to my father and father.” Brown’s parents, who raised five sons and daughter, were high school graduates who, in Brown’s words, had “PhDs in common sense.”
Throughout the evening, Brown, forever humble, was adamant that his ascension to lofty heights was a team effort. Individuals who were instrumental in his personal and professional successes served to highlight this. Brown’s sister, Alicia, loving introduced him to the sea of eager fans. Jim Vance, the WRC-TV news anchor, shared stories from his and Brown’s friendship. Brown credits Vance with helping him to hone his television chops. Amidst high praise, Jeff Fried, Brown’s attorney and friend who persuaded him to write the book, joked about how Brown, affectionately called “JB,” is never on time. “Every chapter has something about him arriving late,” he laughed.
Morgan Wooten, Brown’s basketball coach at DeMatha Catholic High School, also extolled Brown’s many virtues. Brown would later say that Coach Wootten, the winningest coach in the history of high school basketball, underscored what his parents taught him, that “old school values do have contemporary application.”
Alicia Brown managed the evening’s Q&A session after her brother spoke. Here’s how James Brown answered the following question:
Examiner: You obviously have a lot of stories, and many people have told stories about you. Are there any stories that you wish you had included in the book that you hadn’t?
Brown: Probably not [laughter]. I think I’ve been very open and honest with a lot. Again, I talk about the blemishes as well. One of the things that my sister would probably say “James, I’m not sure how appropriate it is,” but I talk about it in the book, especially given what I’d like to call…well, it’s not what I’d like to call, but is what unfortunately is a pathology in the African-American community with far too many kids having kids. And certainly, I didn’t do it the right way. My daughter’s mother, whom I love and respect tremendously, you know, my daughter was out of wedlock, but I vowed that I didn’t need anything legal being hung over my head to take care of my responsibilities.
It’s one of the reasons why I took so long to get married. Because I wanted my daughter to be old enough so I could explain to her why mom and dad didn’t get married, and that was on me. But to make certain that we collectively – her mother, stepmother – that we poured the love of the Lord in her heart, so that she wouldn’t fall prey to some other fast talking guy coming along and to perpetuate the pathology that exists in our community. That was exceedingly important to me. Because if I wanted to stand up and try to be a role model and to walk a life that’s exemplary and a life of excellence then I had to show that you can overcome that and do it the right way.
So that’s one of the stories that my wife allowed me, and my daughter and her mother allowed me to include in the book as well too, because again, you still do things the right way.
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