Buena Park Soldier: He Served, and Died

Army Pfc. Roy Dennis Brown Jr. was unquestionably brave. Enough to go through the rigorous training of an airborne Army Ranger, and enough to parachute into Panama and battle the forces of Gen. Manuel A. Noriega.

But in his final days, the 19-year-old Buena Park native suffered a haunting uneasiness, fears he expressed to his family in his last phone call before his last battle.

“He knew he was going down there, and he couldn’t tell us where he was going, but he called on Thursday (Dec. 14) to tell us that he loved us and say goodby, almost as if he knew he wasn’t coming back,” said Brown’s mother, Julie Otto, 42. “He was scared and had been crying.”

On Wednesday night, when she saw an Army officer approaching her door, she “knew he wasn’t coming home.” Roy Dennis Brown Jr. had died in combat in Panama.

Army officials declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding Brown’s death, citing the continuing mission of his unit, Alpha Company of the Third Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, an elite unit based at Ft. Benning, Ga.

“They’re still deployed there,” said Maj. Joe Padilla, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. “We won’t be getting any of that information until they get back.”

Padilla said that Brown “had to be a very high-caliber soldier” since he was assigned to a unit of the Army Rangers that parachuted into the war zone.

It was just the kind of front-line service that Brown dedicated his life to, and gave his life for, his mother said.

Sitting in the living room of the family’s Lilac Circle home in Buena Park and monitoring the latest news reports out of Panama on Thursday, Otto recalled the brief life of her son, a blond-haired, blue-eyed youth who loved his country and loved serving in the armed forces.

“Roy was probably the best child a mother could have; he was really sweet,” Otto said. “He’d been going to the recruiter’s office most of his senior year--he really wanted to go into the service, he loved it.”

While Otto was proud of her son’s military service--his grandfather had been a career military officer--she wished “he would have picked (another) branch, something not quite as active” as the airborne Army Rangers.

Still, she took pride in the fact that her son was able to accomplish the rigorous training. “A lot of them wash up, but he made it. I was proud of him,” she said.

While Brown was physically ready for combat, emotionally he was ready to take a few days off, his mother said, recalling their last telephone conversation.

“He contacted just about everyone in the family either Thursday or Sunday, and he was in touch with his father for the first time in quite a few years,” Otto said. “He told us he was going to be on leave for New Year’s. He was excited and looking forward to being home.”

“It was always a cause of celebration when he came home,” added Brown’s aunt, Denise Campbell.

Otto said the family was looking forward to her son’s visit because they had seen him only twice since he joined the Army in October, 1988--last Christmas, and last summer during a family trip to Montana. But they heard from him often, at least one phone call a week.

“He really loved being a Ranger. It became the most important thing to him, that and girls,” Otto said, laughing through her tears.

Lt. Col. McDonald Plummer, an Army spokesman at Ft. Benning, described “Ranger school” as “one of the toughest leadership courses we have in the Army.”

After going through basic training, parachute school and finally special airborne training, Brown went on to Ranger school. On March 20, just one day before his 19th birthday, he was awarded his prized black beret and officially assigned to the Army Rangers.

Before joining the Army, Brown’s interest rested with the marching band at Magnolia High School in Anaheim, where he played the trombone. The band was so important to him that Brown temporarily moved in with an Anaheim family after his mother moved to Buena Park, outside the Anaheim Union High School District, so he could stay at Magnolia.

“He lived here for about eight months,” said Sharon Wallace, whose family hosted Brown in the months prior to his June, 1988, graduation. “We saw him last summer on leave. He was real excited about the whole Army thing, and he said he was excited about being on the front line. He was a very patriotic boy.”

Wallace said Brown “liked the feeling of the physical well-being. He liked running and physical activity and being healthy. He liked body-surfing and he had a boogie board. He was a California boy.”

Brown, an only child, was close to Wallace’s sons, Eric Jr., 19, and Dan, 18, also members of the Magnolia High School band.

“The band was real important to him--it gave him a place to be in the school,” Wallace said. “We just always liked Roy, and when we saw the need we invited him to stay here with us. He became like another son to us. His loss is almost as much of a loss for us as it is for his family.”

Despite that loss, Brown’s family said they did not feel that his sacrifice was in vain.

“Roy was really against drugs, he knew that’s what this guy (Noriega) is doing down there, channeling them in,” his aunt said. “We had to go even though he had to be a sacrifice.”

His mother added that she thought the United States “did the right thing” by sending in troops to invade the country and overthrow the Panamanian strongman.

“Even though we lost Roy, I don’t think we made a mistake in ousting Noriega,” Otto said. “It was something that had to be done.”

MARKED MAN--Columnist Dianne Klein knows dictator-at-large Noriega is hiding in Orange County. Now, where’s her million bucks? B1