#i2amru (I, Too, Am Reinhardt) Volume 1 Number 1 | Page 72

Tentatively poking my head into the sociology office
area, it’s no trouble finding Dr. Cheryl Brown’s
nameplate as it’s the first you see. Her office screams
with color and clutter; already, I know she’s my kind
of professor.
“Hey, Justin! Come on in, have a seat,” she remarks,
gesturing to a well-worn desk chair sitting opposite
her which is remarkably the only empty, flat surface
in her office. Her genuine smile reaches all the way
to her eyes as I greet her and begin to explain the
series of questions I was going to ask about her life.
“Hey, don’t be nervous! I love talking about myself,”
she quips, clearly picking up on my interview jitters.
After taking a deep breath, I launch into my first
series of questions; her calm and easy demeanor allows the interview to turn more into a conversation
as we both delve into her interesting and rich past.

What a life!
The Adventures of
Dr. Cheryl Brown

Dr. Brown wasn’t always an approachable, confident professor. She’s both a veteran of the armed
forces and served with a police department. It
wasn’t until later in her life that she discovered her
love of Sociology and became a professor, now at
Reinhardt University. In addition to looking at her
past and how it made her who she is today, I also
interviewed a couple of her students for an outside
perspective on Dr. Brown as not just a professor but
as a person.
Brown had already graduated from
college Agnes Scott College with
a bachelor’s degree in Sociology
when she decided that her best career choice would be to enlist with
the United States Army. Within a
couple of months, she was deployed
to basic training, and after that on
to South Korea. While she talks
about the time she had in South
Korea, her posture and demeanor
take on a more rigid tone. It’s almost as if the memories from being
in the Army are so ingrained that
they still command absolute attention even after all these years.

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(Photos courtesy of Cheryl Brown)

Left:Young Cheryl with her
parents. Above: With Dr. Donald Gregory in Mexico in 2011.

She tells me first about how she was
training to be a “listener” for North
Korean communications. As such,
she attended what she fondly called
“the best damn Korean language
school in the world.” Shaking her
head, she describes times in the past
at that school where depressed soldiers had climbed up on the roof and
shot at the people on F