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NEW YORK SUN MONDAY JANUARY 29, 1940. DONALD BROWN IS DEAD AT 49 United Aircraft President and Aviation Pioneer. DR. W. W. WHITELOCK DIES Writer and Teacher at Temple University and St. Stephens Aviation Pioneer [[image]] Harris & Ewing Photo. Donald L. Brown. Donald Lamont Brown, president of the United Aircraft Corporation since its formation in 1934, and a pioneer in the aviation industry, died in a hospital here today after a long illness. He was 49 years old. He lived in Hartford, Conn., and formerly was the president of the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Corporation, now a division of United. Mr. Brown was born in Berlin, Wis., on November 17, 1890, the son of David Brown, a stonecutter from Glasgow, Scotland. He was graduated from the Berlin High School in 1909 and a short time later got a job with a firm manufacturing rural mail boxes. It was his first experience in industry. In 1911 he went to Chicago and entered the School of Commerce of Northwestern University. He supported himself for three years while attending college by working in the Illinois Steel Company's South Chicago plant. In Automotive Engineering. At that time the young automotive industry had captured the imagination of many youths and he sought and obtained a job in the production department of the old Simplex Automobile Company. Here he came in touch with aeronautical engineering for the first time when the company, in 1915, was building Hispano-Suiza airplane engines for the French Government. In 1917, Simplex, through reorganization, became the Wright-Martin Aircraft Corporation and Mr. Brown was made head of the Long Island City assembly department, in charge of the assembly of aircraft engines. Mr. Brown's chief interest continued in aviation and he believed that the industry had a great future. In 1921 his former Wright-Martin associates made him assistant factory manager of the Wright Aeronautical Corporation at Paterson, N. J. Here he received his first experience in the manufacture of radial air-cooled engines and began his close association with Frederick B. Rentschler, now chairman of the United Aircraft board. Pratt & Whitney Formed. In 1925 Mr. Brown, with Mr. Rentschler and others, founded the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company in Hartford. He was elected president of Pratt & Whitney in 1930. In 1932, he was made vice-president and director of the newly organized United Aircraft & Transport Corporation and when this concern was reorganized as the United Aircraft Corporation in 1934, he was elected its first president. He also was a director of the Dime Savings Bank of Hartford and of the Taber Cadillac Corporation of Hartford; a governor and member of the executive committee of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences and of the Hartford and Hartford Golf clubs. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Ethel Davis Broffe Brown; a son, Donald L. Brown, Jr., a student at Yale, and three sisters, who live in Wisconsin. The Brown home is at 15 Colony Road, West Hartford. Funeral services will be held at 3:30 P. M. tomorrow in the Asylum Hill Church, Hartford. AIR CURR By FREDERICK G MUCH has already appeared in print as to the remarkable career of Donald L. Brown, president of United Aircraft Corporation, whose untimely death last week shocked the industry. It was, indeed, the kind of a rise, from the counter of a general store in Wisconsin to leadership of one of the most important units in American aviation, which gives to the chapters of American business history a flavor all their own. But sound as was his business judgment and keen as was his energy and competitive spirit, it is as a man that Donald Brown will most be missed. Just, fair and kindly, his associates felt the warming influence of his real interest in their welfare, even during his last illness. To an extent unusual even among outstanding leaders - who cannot achieve real [pre]-eminence without it - he had the human touch.
