His name was Charles “Whitney” Brown and he was born June 21, 1913, the son of an immigrant Irish mother and a second-generation Irish father.

On March 19, 1969, an uninsured drunk driver did something the German army and 20 years working underground in the coal mines could not do: he ran a red light and killed him.

Whitney Brown was my father.

I can’t remember a day since his death I haven’t had at least a fleeting thought of him. This Sunday, as I always do on Father’s Day, I’ll spend considerable time thinking about him and the influence he has had on my life.

My father and I were as close as most fathers and sons were when I was growing up. Probably like they are today. We didn’t spend that much time together — I’m the oldest of nine and he had a hard demanding job while I worked weekends bagging groceries at Kroger starting at age 14 — but I like to think it was quality time.

Our connection was through sports. We fished and hunted together, he taught me to throw a curve ball and a sinker — we called it a drop ball in those days — and to shoot a hook shot and to punt a football.

I played every sport our small high school offered, none very well. Unlike my beefy brothers I had a sickly childhood and my muscle and bone structure never fully developed. Plus, (Matt LeZotte would find this hard to believe) I had a speech impediment.

It wasn’t until his death when I met many of his cronies and pals who started sharing stories my brothers and sisters and I had never heard. Like most men of the Greatest Generation, they never discussed the war.

More than one man talked about how my Dad was one of the best athletes to ever come out of the high school which he and I had both attended. He was a single wing quarterback and had opportunities to play college football but the depression made that impossible from a financial standpoint.

When I was inducted into the West Virginia Sports Legends Hall of Fame I told the organizers someone had obviously confused me with my father. I still believe that.

Others who were veterans talked about his service in the war.

Dad had enlisted in the National Guard in the mid-30s so when World War II started, he was off and running. When he left for Europe in early 1943 he left behind a young baby and a pregnant wife.

What little I knew about his war exploits had been picked up in snatches here and there primarily from two of my mother’s brothers who had also served.

I did know he had been in the 101st Airborne and had dropped behind German lines on D-Day. He had landed near Sainte-Mere-Eglise and from there started the march to Berlin.

By the time the 101st reached Bastogne he was a staff sergeant and was caught up in the Battle of the Bulge. In a rare moment he let me know he was proud to be known as a member of the “Battered Bastards of the Battle of Bastogne.”

My father was, in my opinion, one tough nut. Sadly, I did not learn how tough until he had passed away. He was a proud American who loved his country. He was an easy-going man who rarely raised his voice.

When I told him I couldn’t afford to go back to college and had joined the Marine Corps he asked, “Are you sure you want to do that. Those guys get all the tough jobs.” He obviously thought what he did was just another day at the office. I think not.

When the war ended, he returned to his old job in the coal mines where he quickly became a mine foreman and defacto mining engineer due to his leadership qualities and smarts.

We lived in a coal camp in a company house. With babies seemingly coming along every year there weren’t any extras but we had the necessities plus we knew we had parents who loved and cared about us.

My dad was a high school basketball official for 20 years although baseball was the sport he truly loved. He passed that on to me and one of the joys of my life was when he and I would sit down and go through The Sporting News reading all the stories and studying the box scores. It was rare time together.

I wound up becoming a sports writer and the year after his death I found myself standing around the batting cage at Cincinnati’s old Riverfront Stadium preparing to cover the first game of the 1970 World Series between the Reds and Baltimore that I had tears well up in my eyes.

All I could think about was how proud he would have been of me and how he would have loved to have been there. I missed him then. I miss him now. He was a good man. I’m proud to be his son.

Mike Brown is an award winning sportswriter. He covers sports for the Bryan County News.