Kevin Brown was stationed in Minot, N.D., while serving in the U.S. Air Force in 2015 and a life-changing event led him to move to McComb three years later.
While Brown visited family in Minnesota, relatives were paying the tax deed for the property that was once Hughes Grocery Store on St. Augustine Street in McComb. Brown’s grandmother, Gertrude Hughes, owned the store.
The relatives deeded the property to Brown, who had never lived in McComb.
He retired from the Air Force in 2017 and moved to McComb a year later and quickly became active in the community.
Brown is moving again, this time to Philadelphia, Pa., to be near his kids Amira, 16, already a high school senior, and Zoe, 8, a second-grader.
Brown said he will be visiting McComb a couple times a year, but the impact he is leaving behind is long lasting. He focused his time on mentoring kids and giving back to the community where his grandmother was from.
Through Brown’s efforts, the property where Hughes Grocery Store and other local businesses once were became a garden. Brown named the garden “Gertrude’s Garden” after his grandmother. The street next to it, formerly known as West Alley, was recently named Gertrude’s Garden Alley.
Brown also took over a radio show after longtime host Fern Crossley died earlier this year. He renamed the show “Community Matters.”
His children’s book, “I live on a street named St. Augustine,” was published in October. He credited his parents, the late Enos and Mildred Brown, who lives in Franklin County, and others with teaching him how to give back when he grew up in the housing project in Hammond, La.
“There were people in the community that were mentoring,” he said. “They weren’t as direct as I am, but they were positive examples that I could see.”
Brown said he got to know people in Southwest Mississippi through being a substitute teacher in the North Pike and Franklin County school districts until the COVID pandemic hit.
Then, Brown focused on building Gertrude’s Garden.
“Our first planting season, we offered residents a box,” he said. “You plant what you want. We got away from it, but it was really successful as far as the engagement piece because it was a piece of ownership.”
Brown said mostly older people knew about his grandmother’s grocery store, but working on the garden helped him build relationships.
“The actual change was when they started seeing the impact of the youth, giving them something to do. Nobody can disrespect that,” he said.
Brown said he had a similar goal of reaching more people when he took over the show “Community Matters.”
“My aim was to bring more voices around there from the surrounding communities. Because the reach goes out to Tylertown, Natchez, Hazlehurst, below Kentwood (La.),” he said. “I think we were really McComb-centric with our guests.”
Brown said Gloster Town Clown Jannice Weatherspoon, who focuses on giving back and putting smiles on peoples’ faces, was a news correspondent for Amite County.
Brown said “I live on a street named St. Augustine” was told through a child’s point of view and talks about things that are valuable in the Burglund neighborhood, such as the Black History Gallery, Flowery Mount Missionary Baptist Church and Summit Street, which he said is teeming with history.
“The previous narrative before we started doing all this stuff was pretty much negative in Burglund,” he said. “If that’s your narrative and that’s where you live — as a kid I’m talking about, as a youth — that’s going to make you feel a certain type of way, right? So what are the assets to combat that negative narrative for a kid I’m talking about? Not everybody else because our minds are made up because they grow up here.
“You don’t choose where you’re born. They happen to be born in a pretty significant place and just didn’t know it.”
Brown said his two mottos were “planting seeds of hope” and “together we grow.” He said he believes the work is in place to keep Gertrude’s Garden going after he leaves.
“I haven’t done anything in this garden for like a year,” he said. “It’s been other people, groups and organizations and entities that have been doing all the programming. That’s not because of me. That’s because they believe in what they’re doing.”
