Donald Loring Brown’s story is one of intrigue, suspense, drama and excitement.

A high school dropout who had to contend with his father’s suicide at age 13, Brown has been figuratively to hell and back, having shrugged off a serious injury while he served the US Marines, and many feared that he would never walk again.

But courage stepped in. Brown, a former semi-professional American football player, went back to school by first enrolling at Mount Machusett Community College in Boston, and later Amherst College where he double-majored in History and American Studies, before heading off to Harvard Law School.

“I went to Harvard when I was 41 and graduated when I was 44. I started community college at 37, Amherst College, and graduated when I was 41,” he said of his late-blooming life in education during an interview with the Jamaica Observer last week.

Brown, who has been staying in Jamaica for a while and will remain on the island for some time to come, profited from rubbing shoulders with United States President Barack Obama, and Michelle Robinson, who later became Obama’s wife.

“Michelle was in the class before me, so she was my classmate for two years. Barack was in his first year when I was in my third year, so I had Michelle as a classmate for two years and then Barack. They didn’t meet each other at Harvard; they met each other after his first year when he went to Chicago, after his first year, to work with a law firm as an intern and his boss was Michelle, who had graduated the year before he showed up at Harvard. So they immediately got interested in each other, but they couldn’t work with each other so he had to go work for a different lawyer because they started dating,” Brown said of the early association between the two.

“Michelle was the very first student I met at Harvard Law School in the fall of 1986. She is an incredibly gifted person intellectually, and socially … she was far older than her years. When I met her she was in her early 20s but you would think she was 45 or 50 … she was so mature and perfect in appearance; her hair, everything about her, was perfect. She was just a delightful person. He was the same – both were very solid students, very bright, very charismatic and I have often said to people that I am more impressed with her than with him, but I’m impressed with both,” Brown said.

So strong was the association with the Obama’s that Brown’s son, Nicholas, worked with Michelle for a year at the White House, the US President’s residence.

Nicholas Alexander Brown was the social secretary intern at the White House for Michelle, and was assigned to her, while a further 99 interns worked in other buildings. He is now the producer and director of music at the Library of Congress in Washington, and was also a special assistant to the President of Harvard University.

“My own story of doing well has also made my children’s stories much better than mine were when I was young. The thing that I think about in life as my greatest achievement in life is that I broke the cycle of poverty and nothing in living up in a sea of uncertainty. I broke the cycle of being uncertain about life, I created an environment where my sons could be certain about life, and it has worked out; they have both realised their dreams. My youngest son dreamed about being a great musician and he has been a great musician ever since he was a little kid; my younger son announced when he was four years old that he wanted to go to Harvard Law School just like his dad and he is going there last year, having just graduated from college. Seeing my sons dream and reach the dream represents to me that we have broken the cycle. My father and his father they were all Irish dirt farmers … we had nothing, and I don’t mean we were poor, we had nothing, zero, and we survived. When I was young living in nothing, I didn’t know I had nothing, because I didn’t know there was something,” Brown told the Sunday Observer after he had wrapped up a motivational speech to students at the International University of the Caribbean (IUC) in St Andrew.

“As I went along in life I never really achieved anything, other than I was a great athlete, but in life that doesn’t do anything for you, because when you can’t play anymore you are back to being nobody again, and I experienced that going from the athletic prowess and great feelings about oneself playing sport, and doing well, being named captain and an all-star, that all feels good. But knowing you can’t play anymore, it’s all gone, so I had to find a different way, or do nothing and just be a bum and I didn’t want to be a bum … I wanted to do something with my life,” he said.

When he got injured at age 36, he didn’t walk again until he was 41. By that time he had already formulated a plan to walk across the country because he used to say that if he ever got the chance to walk again, he would really walk, and walk he did … three times across America, covering 5,000 miles. Brown would reveal that every time he did it, he loved it even more. That thought has now been transferred to Jamaica, as he has been thinking about walking across Jamaica to raise money for children.

He is even contemplating starting with a shorter walk from Kingston by way of the Junction Road in St Mary and into Ocho Rios, St Ann to raise money for IUC.

“It took me 121 actual days — I took 12 days off for NFL Sundays — to walk across the US. I walked from Boston to the mid-coast of California to St Simeon, between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I walked zigzag through 21 states, so when I got to California that was the last state … 5,004 miles. I had a van behind me and a lot of times people would join me. In fact, there is a chapter in my book (The Morphine Dream) about the Pied Piper. I was walking through a black neighbourhood in Indianapolis and about 40 or 50 little black kids started following me and then the mothers came driving up saying ‘what are you doing kidnapping our children? That happened in quite a few places, none as pronounced as Indianapolis though. Some would ride bicycles with me for hours while I walked. I raised millions of dollars for six charities – Jimmy Fund which is children with cancer, cerebral palsy because my younger son has cerebral palsy; United Negro College Fund; Shelter for Homeless, and a couple of others. I didn’t have to do anything, I put a telephone number on the van – Call 1-800-WalkUSA and when you call it, say you want to donate to the Jimmy Fund press 1, you want to donate to the United Negro College Fund press two, and so forth. The charities each handled the money.

“I have been in Jamaica for a while now. I want to work with kids, university students. I got several students from International University of the Caribbean who told me they want me to be their mentor. One thing I don’t want to do is turn people away and have them get this idea that they should go to America and get an education. No. Help build this university because the goal is to make this university a better place to go and have students come out of here and to have students that come out of here to do great things that help Jamaica. That’s my interest – to help students realise their own potential and through their own potential make this university and country a better place,” Brown said.