Elwood Brown

Involvement in sports

• Brown joined the YMCA in 1892, and stayed for life. At the Chicago YMCA, he assisted Physical Director George Wolf Ehler, 1898–1903. Brown then studied at Wheaton College in Illinois, where he was also a basketball player and coach, but could not complete his course due to financial constraints. He next served as coach of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign basketball team for the 1905–06 season, then was hired as Chicago YMCA Physical Director in 1906. In 1907, he became Physical Director of the Salt Lake City YMCA, serving until the start of 1910.
• Offered the job of Physical Director of the Manila YMCA, Brown moved to the US Philippine Islands in January 1910 and immediately introduced basketball and volleyball.
• In the summers of 1910 and 1911, by request of Governor-General William Cameron Forbes, Brown set up a sports program for Filipino insular government employees at the summer capital of Baguio, a hugely successful project that favorably impressed the Governor. After he was appointed Chairman of the Playground Commission by Gov. Forbes, Brown set up a network of public playgrounds in Manila.
• In November 1910, Brown proposed the establishment of the Philippine Amateur Athletic Federation which was founded in January 1911 with Gov. Forbes as president and Brown as the Secretary. Simultaneously, various sports bodies for individual sports were organised under the PAAF umbrella. The PAAF was recognized in 1929 by the International Olympic Committee as the Philippine Olympic authority, and later changed its name to Philippine Olympic Committee in 1975.
• In 1911 Brown became director of athletics at the famous . The Carnival was an exposition and festival showcasing American and Philippine culture, commerce, industry, politics, military, and tourism, would last from 1908 to 1939, and would be copied by other cities and towns across the islands. Brown used the Carnival to promote sports in Asia. In the same year, the Philippine Amateur Athletic Federation invited foreign participation at the Manila Carnival games.
• In September 1912, Brown proposed the organization of a "Far Eastern Olympic Games" during the 1913 Manila Carnival, that resulted in the formation of the Far Eastern Olympic Association, with Gov. Forbes as president and Brown as Secretary-General, and the holding of the Far Eastern Olympic Games, January–February 1913.
• With the collaboration of Everett Stanton Turner, Brown and the YMCA injected sports into the Philippine education curriculum.
• A full account of the historical influence of Brown's organizing efforts in Asia is the article "Muscular Christianity and the “Western Civilizing Mission”: Elwood S. Brown, the YMCA, and the Idea of the Far Eastern Championship Games" by Stefan Hübner in Diplomatic History, 39.3, December 9, 2013, pp 532–537. The of the article describes Brown as "one of the most important promoters of muscular Christianity and “Olympism” during that period."
• In 1918 towards the end of World War I, Brown proposed and organised the holding of the American Expeditionary Forces Championships and the consequential Inter-Allied Games and the construction of the Stade Pershing named after AEF commander John Joseph Pershing who appointed Brown as of the Inter-Allied Games.
• In 1920 Brown, representing the International Olympic Committee and the YMCA, traveled through South America and organised the South American Athletic Federation.
• Brown addressed the International Olympic Committee three times: at Antwerp, Lausanne, and Paris. At the 1920 meeting in Antwerp, Belgium, Brown broached the idea of holding a "Hindu Games" in India.

Involvement in Scouting

• As the physical director of the Manila YMCA, Elwood Brown also became the Philippines' first Scoutmaster, organizing the very first Boy Scout troops in 1910. Not surprisingly, Brown then involved the Boy Scouts in social service in the Manila Carnival.
• Brown wrote to Boy Scouts of America Honorary President Theodore Roosevelt about the Manila Boy Scouts serving at the 1910 Manila Carnival and the ". Brown's letter was extensively quoted in Roosevelt's letter, dated July 1911, to BSA Executive Secretary James Edward West. The BSA published the entire text of Roosevelt's letter in the 1911 first edition of the Official Handbook for Boys. ]
• Portions of Roosevelt's quote of Brown's letter have been reprinted in New Castle News, the Corsicana Daily Sun, Boys' Life, The Washington Post, The Youngstown Daily Vindicator, The Miami Metropolis, and the BSP book On My Honor. The Boys' Life bit, "Philippine Boy Scouts," reports: "Proof of the value of the Boy Scouts comes from Manila, Philippine Islands, the outpost of the Boy Scout movement. " The Miami Metropolis article "Boy Scouts Work with the Firemen Just Like Heroes", reported that it was "Elwood E. Brown, organizer in the Philippines" who had written to Roosevelt.
• The indicated that there were three Scoutmasters in the Philippine Islands as of January 1, 1912. The three Scouting organizers in the Philippines at that time on record were Elwood Stanley Brown, Mark Thompson, and George H. Mummert.
• During his world tour, Boy Scouts Founder, Sir Robert Stephenson Baden-Powell, sent back to London articles for publication in the British Scouting periodical The Scout. In issue no. 224, 27 July 1912, in the article "In the Cannibal Islands," Baden-Powell made a brief narration about his trip to Manila. He mentioned "Boy Scouts of the Philippines" and that he had been met by a "Guard of Honour." He quoted Brown's and Roosevelt's letters about the Manila fire and the Manila Carnival in which Manila Scouts rendered service. In the article, Baden-Powell urged his young British readers "to get into correspondence with your brother Scouts in Manila… The Chief Scoutmaster is Mr. Elwood Brown, Y.M.C.A., Manila."

Later life