Roosevelt Brown

Roosevelt Brown came to San Diego in 1954 from Helena, Arkansas, with his mother and five siblings. He graduated from San Diego High School in 1961.

He graduated from Associated Barber College in San Diego, and in 1967, went into business for himself. Besides barbering, he owned a record shop and invented a line of hair care products. He is married and has four sons.

From 1973 until 2005, Brown worked for Solar Turbines as a parts inspector. Throughout the years, he attended classes at San Diego City College and San Diego State University.

Today, Brown is the coordinator and director of Reading Literacy Learning Inc., a nonprofit group he formed more than 20 years ago to encourage children to read. It was always Brown’s goal to instill the love of reading in children.

As a volunteer for Friends of the Library more than 30 years ago, he was given books left over from library book sales. He loaded them into his Chevy pickup and drove around southeastern San Diego distributing books to kids. “If a kid was standing on the corner or walking down the street we’d stop and give them some books,” Brown said in an interview with a San Diego Union-Tribune reporter. “I wanted to encourage them to get in the habit of reading.”

Brown founded the Children's Book Party in 1980. Using corporate and individual donations, he and his volunteers collect thousands of new books at all reading levels to give away at the annual party. The goal of this enterprise is for children to build their own home libraries starting with a wide variety of free new books.

Over the years, millions of books have been given away at the Children's Book Party. Ironically, Brown didn’t always love books. Growing up, he didn’t like school and wasn’t a good reader. As a youngster he had a severe speech impediment that made him dread school and avoid academic and social activities. His challenges in school provided the motivation for a mission that has benefited thousands of San Diego children over nearly three decades.