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07/08/2008 09:26 AM

 

Local Dentist - Attended College With Barack Obama July 8, 2008 ECO staff – Laure Cioffi, Senior Journalist   ELLWOOD CITY – Brad Brown thought his brush with fame during his college years at Columbia University in New York City was playing for the college basketball team at Madison Square Garden. Now, 25 years later, he realizes his real brush with fame came during three semesters of political science courses where one of his classmates was Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee. Brown, a local dentist, attended Columbia University from 1979 to 1983 and didn’t much think about Barack Obama until the 2003 Democratic National Party Convention when Obama gave the keynote address that put him in the national spotlight. “I said `I know that guy’ and I’ve followed his career ever since,” said Brown last week from his Fifth Street dental practice. Brown explains that he was a biochemistry major while attending Columbia, but the college curriculum required him to take a political science course. The university, an all-male school at the time, had small class sizes of seven or eight students in each class. Brown says he and his roommate, Pittsburgh native Peter Leone, were in that political science class with Obama for about a year and a half. “What I remember about him is that in class – for a 21 or 22 year old kid – he was extremely articulate,” Brown said. Brown recalled that Obama was very formal and would stand up when giving an answer in class where the others would respond while seated. Obama attended his first two years of college at Occidential College in Los Angeles before transferring to Columbia University where he graduated in 1983. Brown admits that he and Obama were not close at school. “We were by no means friends. We were just classmates for three semesters,” he said. But Brown still wonders if Obama might remember him because Brown, a close-up magician, used to do magic tricks for Obama before class. “I almost when to Community College of Beaver County when he was speaking [earlier this year]. I thought the magic tricks might be the only reason he might remember me,” Brown said. Brown does recall that Obama was active in the college’s anti-apartheid group that often protested apartheid in South Africa which was a hot topic in the early 1980s. He also remembers Obama playing basketball in the school’s inter-mural leagues. Obama, in published interviews, describes his years at Columbia as a time when he decided to get serious about school. He’s been quoted as saying he spent most of his time in the student library not socializing. “I was living like a monk,” Obama has said. As a transfer student, Obama did not qualify for student housing and lived in a variety of different situations while attending school, according to reports. Obama later went to Harvard Law School Brown said since he only knew Obama through that one course he was surprised when he got a call from an Associated Press reporter three months ago inquiring about the presidential candidate. “He kept asking me the same questions over and over again. `What did you think of Barack Obama? Did you party with him,’” Brown said. “After about a 10 minutes he said `Look doc, I’m looking for dirt.’” Brown said he had no dirt to give on the presidential nominee and only remembers him as very studious. But about two weeks later, Brown recalls seeing a news report that Obama admitted drug use in college. “I guess that guy found his dirt,” Brown said. Even with his personal brush with Obama, Brown says he’s still not sure whom he will be voting for in the fall. “I believe he might be about eight years away from being qualified for the job. I do believe he has the intelligence,” said Brown, who is a registered Democrat, but describes himself as an independent voter. “I’m not saying Barack Obama is not bright, but I’m not sure I agree with some of his solutions,” Brown said.