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SMITHLAND, Iowa. Gaylyn Beckner never knew her uncle Wesley Brown, never was told much about him. What he was like as a young man, his personality, those details weren t discussed very often. Buckner s mother, Ida Bainbridge, said little about her older brother in their Smithland home. I really didn t know anything. My mother didn t really talk about it. It hurt her too much, said Beckner, born in 1945, well after U.S. Navy Fireman 1st Class Wesley J. Brown, of Oto, age 25, was killed on board the battleship USS Oklahoma during the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, members of another branch of Brown s family tree also felt his loss. Like Beckner, Marilyn Cugnet didn t hear her mother, Fern Knibbs, speak much of her brother s death, which was multiplied later in World War II when a second brother, Max, a Canadian soldier, was killed in Germany. ....
Wesley James Brown was born March 1, 1916 in Eureka, Montana. His parents were Randolph and Bessie (White) Brown. They came to Innes, Sask. in 1916 with their three children Radie, Fern and Wesley. They resided on the family farm that Bessie’s father Thomas White established, two and half miles from Innes. While living on the farm, they had two more children, Max and Ida. Wesley went to school at Dunreath near Innes. He was liked and had friends in the community. He worked on the farm with his brothers and dad. In 1937, he went Iowa making his home with his mother, Bessie and Ida, his sisters. He worked with his cousin Marven Dawson on the farm. ....