-A trailblazer in corporate America and a champion for children in Southern Nevada, Hannah Marie Brown is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪ -Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and other supporters.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

In 1945 at just six years old, she and her mother moved from Stamps, Arkansas, to Las Vegas.

After attending what's now known as the Historic Westside School, she went to Rancho High School, her first racially integrated school, in 1954.

She'd go on to make history in the aviation industry before leading Las Vegas' Urban Chamber of Commerce.

Perhaps best known as an education advocate, she's helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships.

Hannah Marie Brown, the namesake of Hannah Marie Brown Elementary School in Henderson, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

(Hannah Brown) Thank you for inviting me.

-And that school opened in 2021.

-It did.

-You were telling me off camera you're there at least two times a week?

-Yes.

Sometimes more.

-Okay.

Helping in all sorts of capacity, down to fixing people's zippers on their jackets when they break?

-Yes, yes.

Once they found out I could sew, then I became the official zipper fixer.

-Wow.

Okay.

So when it opened, Channel 13 came and interviewed you, and you told them this: What my heart has always told me is that if you didn't get what you want, make sure someone else gets what they need.

Where did that come from?

-Shortly after high school, I became pregnant and gave birth to my daughter.

So, of course, I had to devote my life to supporting her and making sure she had a good life.

And so once I was almost done with my career, I said, I've got to finish, get my, finish my degree.

And obviously, you can tell, the tearing came with age.

But anyway, and I-- When I was president of the Chamber, one of our sponsors gave me $500.

And I gave two students $250, scholarships, and thought I'd set the world on fire.

Well, the next year, I was able to raise $25,000 because I was able-- I had then the background of having given the two students the scholarships.

So I completely forgot about me finishing my education, because I was done with my career.

And I had retired at the time, and I was like, why don't I devote my time to helping other people get what I didn't get so they could have a wonderful career like I had.

-How much money have you raised in scholarships?

-Almost $2 million.

-$2 million?

-Yes, almost 2 million.

Getting close.

-That's incredible.

-Even during the pandemic, we were able to raise at least 50,000.

-And that was a difficult time to raise money, because-- -It was, yes, because you had no contact.

It was easy.

But a lot of our donors that had stayed with us for a number of years continued to donate, so we were able to help those little people go to college.

-So $2 million for scholarships, $4 million for the Historic Westside School.

-I was able to acquire that through the Centennial Committee.

I've been on the Centennial Committee since its inception, and Senator Reid was committed to Rick, then Ricki Barlow, that if we raised the, the seed money, the $4 million, that he could help us get the Westside School converted to the center that it is now.

And fortunately, I was able to acquire, to get the 2 million-- I mean, the $4 million.

-That is a lot of money.

-It's a lot of money.

It's kind of high to count.

-I mean, take yourself back to graduating high school.

Could you have imagined what you would go on to achieve?

-No.

Not at all.

And basically, even through my travels with my career, I was promoted seven times in ten years.

-Wow.

-And I never-- And every adventure was a new adventure.

I never took it for granted that from here I will go there.

And the biggest surprise was when, when Delta bought us in 1987.

Well, actually, I was the first female and black manager that Western Airlines had.

-As a station manager, right?

-Yes.

-What does that mean?

-It's just our station locations.

And we call them stations, you know.

If you go to a Western counter or a Delta counter, we call them stations.

And anyway, I had-- So when Delta bought us, I became their first female and first black manager.

And it was too funny.

One of my senior vice presidents said the CEO of Delta asked him, called him in one day and asked him, had said, Harold, tell me a little bit about Hannah Brown.

He said, We got 40-some male managers, and you want to know about Hannah Brown?

He said, All I can tell you is she'll work circles around all those guys.

The fun thing was I was a workaholic.

And when I was in Ontario, I went to-- I was promoted to the Ontario station because they were having some personnel problems, and they felt that I would be able to manage them.

And we did.

-What a situation to go into.

-Oh, yeah.

But you know when you go in, they don't tell you a lot.

But they will tell you that, We've selected you because we feel that you have the ability to correct the problem.

And you know, that's pretty much all you need to know when you're with a big corporation.

And but anyhow, we-- that kind of went on for about six months, and then we got that straightened out.

-Tell me about that experience.

-Oh, well, that experience was we had a supervisor there that was just running things.

And he had run off about three white men before I got there, and I guess he figured I'd be easy target.

So anyway, we, to make a long story short, I came in one morning after about six months--and we went through some changes--and there was a note on my desk said, Please accept this as my resignation.

So I called my upline, who was in Atlanta, and I said, Larry, let me read something to you.

So I read it to him real quick, and he said, Oh, no, you're not getting off that easy.

So he put me on hold.

And back then you had-- you were you on hold.

But anyway, he went and got all the regionals in the, that were on duty.

And brought them into his office, and he said, Miss Brown, he said, Can you read that to me again?

And I said, you know, Effective immediately, please accept this as my resignation.

That's all it said.

And they, the room burst into laughter because they all knew what a problem this guy had been.

But you know, he was, he was a piece.

He had acid put on my car, and, you know, just a few things we went through.

-Holy moly.

-Yeah, but he left.

-You had to move back to Las Vegas because your mother was ill.

-No.

I moved during while she was ill.

But what happened is I accepted early retirement so I could be here for her and my daughter, and I came back.

And she played a huge role in your life.

-Oh, yes.

-How so?

What did you learn?

-Well, I learned a great work ethic from her.

And she was a good person.

She went to work and went to church.

I mean, so, you know, she had great-- I mean, she was just a hard working, simple, spiritual person.

-Right.

You told me off camera that she had a job.

What was she doing, laundry at a brothel or a-- -Oh, yes.

She was working as the maid for the ladies at the brothel.

-But because of her religion, couldn't stay.

-Yeah.

She said she made more money than she'd ever made in her life, but she could not deal with that lifestyle, so-- -She was very committed.

-Oh, yes.

She left there, she left Reno and moved to Las Vegas to work at the El Rancho Vegas.

And at that time, the only two hotels on the Strip was the Old Frontier and the El Rancho Vegas.

And everything else was just desert, yeah.

-Let's get into segregation.

-Okay.

-You go to Rancho High School the first year that it was desegregated?

-Yeah.

-What was that like?

What do you remember from that time?

-It was the first year Rancho was built, because then there was only Vegas High and Basic High.

And when Rancho was built, then a lot of us were assigned to the--kids that lived on the west side--were assigned to Rancho.

And it was, you know, for me, it was it was fun.

You know, I befriended this little girl named Arlene Christensen, and she said-- She said to me one day after the teachers told us we had to select our student body officers, she said, Hannah, you should run for student body office.

Everybody likes you.

And I looked around, and I'm like, There are 10 people here that look like me.

But you're kids, you know.

-Out of how many?

-There were probably maybe 200 of us.

-And there were 10 black children there?

-Maybe 10 or 12, yeah.

And I was-- So I didn't say anything.

About two weeks later, she starts passing out campaign material with my name on it.

-So you ran, and you said you beat the socks off of your competitor.

-Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we took care of him.

-So what-- That shows to me Rancho was more accepting at that time, but that's not something that you experienced when you would travel, I think, out of the city?

-Well, you know, the school-- I think the schools were a little different.

There were very-- A lot of the kids that I grew up with didn't go to high school.

After the 8th grade, they would go to work.

-Okay.

-And people needed money back then, and you didn't make much money, so, you know, a lot of the kids just dropped out of school.

So there weren't-- And, basically, you didn't have the same-- We lived in separate areas because, you know, like I said, all the black people lived on the west side.

But you didn't feel that separation when you were in school.

-Okay.

What happened, though, when you went to Reno?

-Oh, when I went to-- Oh, that was fun.

When I went to-- Rancho, the school system, rezoned.

And then my second, my 8th through graduation was at Vegas High.

So I became-- I figured I had to have an office, so I became president of the FHA.

And we were invited to go to, I believe it was Fallon, the little town near Reno, to compete with the girls there on projects that you would actually, that you would learn through your FHA.

And we-- So we got on the bus, went to Reno.

And when we got there, we were sitting out.

The teacher got off and went into the hotel, and we were waiting for her to come back.

And she never came back, never came back.

I said to the girl, Oh, I'll go get Mrs.

Stuckey.

So I got off the bus and went into the hotel, and she looked up and saw me.

She says, Hannah, go get back on the bus.

So I went and got back on the bus, and I said, I wasn't able to talk to her.

She told me to come and get back on the bus.

So later on, you know, somebody always tells you, that she was stuck in there because they wanted to send me to a different hotel.

And Mrs.

Stuckey said, By herself?

She's a kid.

So they finally agreed to let me stay at the hotel as long as I didn't go out of the room.

Well, we only stayed one night, so there was nothing for-- no place for us to go.

And the next day, when we went out to do the presentation, of course, I was selected to do the presentation.

And when I walked out on the stage, all the little girls started snickering.

And I thought, Oh, I got to get myself together, because I can't let my classmates down.

So I got myself together and did our presentation on paper, and we won first place.

-I do want to fit one more story in.

Who was your 2nd grade teacher, and how did she influence you?

-Mabel Hoggard, and she was-- She had such an impact on my life.

-And this was at the Historic Westside School?

-My 2nd grade teacher.

-And that's now a cultural center that people can visit because of you.

-Oh, boy, I tell you.

But she was, she was the first black teacher to teach in the Clark County School District.

-And in Nevada, too, right?

-Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

But she was-- She had such an impact on my life because she was very encouraging.

And she made me believe I could do anything I tried to do, as long as I just put my mind to it was what she would always say.

-We are so thankful to have you on Nevada Week In Person.

Hannah Marie Brown, thank you for coming in.

-Thank you for having me.