ALUMNI COMMUNITY STUDENT LIFE

Brown Shares Insight in Gaddis Lecture

• EMILY KESEL
• 11 OCTOBER 2019

When John Brown, ’94, was learning reading at a Missouri elementary school – one of the many he attended – he struggled to grasp the parts of speech. Eventually, the powers that be labeled him “slow“ and placed him intermediate reading class.

Years later, his mother told him that his IQ was actually quite high when his parents had him tested, and they realize that his struggle with the parts of speech was actually due to his “bouncing around schools” throughout childhood, not because he was “slow.”

Now, Brown says, that same school teaches from one of the books he has written.

But even before that satisfying term events, he told listeners at the latest Merrill E. Gaddis Memorial Lecture, he decided from young age to use that label – slow – and other difficulties and failures as motivation.

That decision has led him to some impressive places, as in the outlined in a speech on October 10. The Central alumnus’ lecture included an explanation of the “odd chain of events from when I was sitting in your seat” to where he is today, as well as “Life Lessons from Interviewing the Most Successful People in the World.” 

Brown, who graduated from Central with a biology degree and a minor in chemistry, said his life has played out “sometimes in miraculous ways” and credits that to a key principle he has practiced: work in the natural, let God take care of the supernatural.

At multiple points in his life, Brown received what most people would consider a lucky break – walking into places and getting jobs on the spot, getting terminated from the contract, one day before a new one better opportunity came along – but he maintains that the work he was doing for himself behind the scenes was just as important.

“When the parts you can handle meet the parts you can’t, that’s where success comes,” he said.

In addition to his own life advice, Brown shared some insight from his lunch of people is interviewed during this time in radio and television – the majority of which has been spent in Missouri in Florida. Some “nuggets” of wisdom from the speech include the following:

“Outwork everyone else. (Hint: it’s no really that hard.)*
-John Q. Hammons

“True character is determined when nobody else is looking.”
-Colin Powell

“Stop running in circles. Make sure you effort actually takes you somewhere.”
-Senator Rick Scott

“Excellence is the key to success.”
-Lou Holtz

“The best witness you can have is to live a life that others want to emulate.”
-Dave Ramsey

Brown also stressed the importance of not been into “the negativity trap” and always questioning the source – because everybody’s got agenda. He shared stories from John Cena and Kurt Warner to have a size why not to “buy and tell other people to find you.”

He ended the lecture by telling those in attendance, “take life seriously, and know your why,” emphasizing the point with an analogy of making a trip to New York to Los Angeles. There may be many twist and turns and obstacles along the way, he said, keep moving.

“The obstacles make the trip all that much better,” he concluded, “because you’re that much smarter, that much wiser, by the end.”

Brown currently works an an anchor with KTVI in St. Louis and is working on two more books to add to the four he’s already published this year. He resides in St. Louis with his wife and two daughters.

The Gaddis Lecture is an annual event sponsored by CMU’s Kappa Chapter Pi Gamma Mu, an international honor society for the social sciences. It was established in 1984 memory of Dr. Merrill Elmer Gaddis, who founded the Kappa chapter and served CMU for nearly 30 years.