Featured Aspires Supporter of the Month
Mr. Truman T. Brown, Jr.
 

TRUMAN BROWN

In the downtown offices of Los Angeles City Hall, Truman Brown is the Information Systems Coordinator and Senior Systems Analyst of the City of Los Angeles Board of Public Works.  He has provided Information Technology services throughout City Hall for over 26 years.  When he’s not busy installing, connecting, troubleshooting or otherwise managing computer systems, he designs and maintains the websites of both the Board of Public Works and the Department of Public Works.

Truman’s love of technology began in the early 80’s after a tour of duty in the United States Marine Corps and with the purchase of a $99 Timex Sinclair 1000 (one of the first, and cheapest home computers sold internationally).  Sporting 2K of RAM and a tape recorder for data storage, this computer enabled Truman to teach himself the fundamentals of structured programming, 8086 Assembly Language, and BASIC.  This knowledge assisted him greatly when he returned to college to earn a degree in Business Information Systems.  He later went on to teach himself COBOL, Pascal, C, C++, and many different flavors of web programming.

During the past three decades, Truman has been an active participant in several online communities specializing in computer graphics and art.  A showcase of his computer artwork and videos can be viewed on his blog at http://www.browngrafix.com and his YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/trumanbrown.

For the past 25 and 17 years respectively, Truman has been single-handedly responsible for the design and creation of all of the event/program booklets for the Martin Luther King Community Coalition and the Aspires West Pasadena organization.  He has spent countless hours creating quality souvenir booklets for both organizations and has never actually charged us for his desktop publishing and other computer services.  Had he done so, we would not have been able to afford it.  He has saved us thousands of dollars, for which we are eternally grateful.

Truman is a proud Blair High School Class of ’75 Viking, a Pasadena City College Class of ’77 Lancer, and a California State University, Los Angeles Class of ’89 Golden Eagle.  He is married to his high school sweetheart, Madrid, and together they have three beautiful daughters, Jamaica, Martinique, and Savannah.

Mr. Brown is indeed “special” and we hate to think how we would have fared without him.

FRAN GILMORE, assistant

In her free time, volunteer Fran Gilmore assists with the uploading of photos to the Aspires website when staff emails them to her. One thing she notes, "I'm learning a great deal from Truman!"

-Dr. David L. Jacobs, Program Director