David M. Brown began his newspaper career with the Memphis Commercial Appeal in 1970. He later worked for United Press International in Jackson, Miss., and several newspapers in Mississippi and Texas. During a career interlude in the 1980s, he was assistant marketing director, creative director and the print, television and radio copy writer for Snowshoe Ski Resort in West Virginia. He started research on the New London School explosion while living in East Texas in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He has conducted interviews with survivors including students and teachers, rescue workers, and others to gain extensive insights about the disaster, the people who lived through it, and those lost. Many of those interviewed have since died, their memories of an historic disaster preserved only in David's notes, audio recordings and this book. Most recently, David was a government and political reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review from 1994 through January, 2009, when he resigned in order to work full-time on Gone at 3:17 until it is finished.
A graduate of Mississippi State University with a degree in English literature, David is a student of American history and has read extensively about the Great Depression. He lives with his wife, Mary, in South Fayette, a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA. Mary Brown, who retired in September after 29 years with the Department of the Army, manages the manuscript and other responsibilities on Gone at 3:17. For the past nine years, she was administrative assistant to the commander at the Kelly Support Facility in Collier Township.
David and co-author Michael Wereschagin have worked closely together during the last six years. This includes their work covering the 2008 presidential election, including the seven-week Democratic primary race in Pennsylvania between then-senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Brown traveled for one-week intervals with the Obama and Sen. John McCain campaigns. His skills and credibility as an interviewer are well documented. He conducted one-on-one interviews with Obama and McCain, which are among thousands of interviews over his career as a journalist, including personal interviews with then-President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney; then-Sen. Hillary Clinton; the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, former Vice President Al Gore; Tom Ridge; Ralph Nader; George McGovern; Muhammad Ali; Steve Forbes; Gov. Ed Rendell; Newt Gingrich and other prominent politicians and public figures.
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