Garry E. Brown

Brown was born in Schoolcraft, Michigan on August 12, 1923{{cite web |title=Garry Eldridge Brown |website=Voteview |url=https://voteview.com/person/11006/garry-eldridge-brown |access-date=July 6, 2024}} to a family with a political background in Michigan. His great-grandfather, Ebenezer Lakin Brown, and his grandfather, Addison Makepeace Brown, both served in the Michigan State Legislature.{{citation needed|date=October 2023}}

During World War II, Brown served in the Twenty-fourth Infantry Regiment of the United States Army as second lieutenant in Japan. After the war, he worked for the FBI, under Hoover{{citation needed|date=October 2023}}, before earning a B.A. from Kalamazoo College in 1951 and a LL.B from George Washington University Law School in 1954. He was admitted to the bar in 1954 and commenced practice in Kalamazoo. He was commissioner of the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan from 1957 to 1962 and was a delegate to the Michigan constitutional convention of 1961-1962.{{CongBio|B000917|inline=y}}

He served two terms in the Michigan State Senate from 1963 to 1966, where he was minority floor leader and chairman of the Republican senate policy committee. He represented the 6th district from 1963 to 1964 and the 21st district from 1965 to 1966.{{cite web |url=https://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/brown4.html#689.11.31|title=Brown, G to I|publisher=Political Graveyard |access-date=October 19, 2023}}

In 1966, Brown defeated incumbent Democrat Paul H. Todd, Jr., one of the "Five Fluke Freshmen"{{citation needed|date=October 2023}}, to be elected as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan's 3rd congressional district for the Ninetieth and to the five succeeding Congresses, serving from January 3, 1967 to January 3, 1979.

Brown took the lead in October 1972 in obstructing the efforts of Rep. Wright Patman, D-TX, to have the House Banking and Currency Committee investigate the flow of illegal campaign funds to the Watergate burglars. By July 1973, with the scheme unraveling in the courts and in televised Senate hearings, Brown was admitting he had been wrong to do so. {{Cite book |last=Kutler |first=Stanley I. |title=The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |year=1990 |isbn=0-394-56234-8 |location=New York |pages=229-233}}

He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1978, losing to Democrat Howard E. Wolpe.

He resumed the practice of law and was a resident of Washington, D.C. until his death.

Garry Brown married Frances Wilkins in 1955, together they had four daughters, Frances, Mollie, Amelia, and Abigail.{{cite web |title=Michigan Legislative Biography |website=Library of Michigan |url=https://mdoe.state.mi.us/legislators/Legislator/LegislatorDetail/556 |access-date=July 6, 2024}} His family owned and operated a dairy farm while he was growing up in Schoolcraft, Michigan. They were one of the first to settle there, and his family still owns the original property that the Browns settled on in the 1830s.{{citation needed|date=October 2023}}

Brown died on August 27, 1998 in Washington, D.C. and was laid to rest in Schoolcraft, Michigan.

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{{succession box | before=Paul H. Todd, Jr. | title=United States Representative for the 3rd Congressional District of Michigan| years=1967 – 1979 | after= Howard Wolpe }}

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{{U.S. Michigan Representatives}}

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Category:1923 births

Category:1998 deaths

Category:Republican Party Michigan state senators

Category:Delegates to the 1961–1962 Michigan Constitutional Convention

Category:United States Army officers

Category:George Washington University Law School alumni

Category:Kalamazoo College alumni

Category:United States Army personnel of World War II

Category:People from Kalamazoo County, Michigan

Category:Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Michigan

Category:20th-century members of the Michigan Legislature

Category:20th-century members of the United States House of Representatives