Arthur Brown: Marysville’s New Deal Proponnent Turned Wartime Mayor
Throughout history, the magnitude of certain events on the life of a person or a place sometimes goes unappreciated in the moment. Events that are seen as turning points in the timeline of history today, in many cases were not given a second thought while they were unfolding. While hindsight is 2020, it is impossible to know what will one day be written in a textbook, and what will be relegated to the garbage bin of humanity. The accession of Arthur Brown to the position of Mayor of Marysville on August 19th, 1937 is the former. While it is not in the same category as D-Day or Pearl Harbor, Brown becoming Mayor put in place necessary leadership that would allow Marysville to weather the world war that was on the horizon. What transpired on that hot August day in the cramped council chambers of the old town hall is where the story of Marysville in World War II rightfully begins.
The events that unfolded leading to Arthur Brown taking the oath of office on August 19th began a week earlier on August 12th when Mayor A.H. (Alfred Hiram) March announced his resignation. Mayor March was a year and eight months into his two-year term he had been elected to in December 1935. Before that, he had served on the Town Council for many years. In the summer of 1937, Alfred March sold the White Auto Camp which he had owned and operated and decided to move to Seattle. With this change in residence, state law required he tender his resignation. Upon this sudden announcement, March remarked that he “regret(s) leaving Marysville” and that he was glad to have been “connected with Marysville’s civic functions.” The question now became, who would be the next Mayor? City law at the time stated that any “senior member” of the Town Council could be appointed to fill the position, serving as “Substitute Mayor.” The city law always stipulated that this position was to be appointed weekly, meaning that technically Marysville could have had a new Mayor every week until the end of 1937. Whoever was to be appointed would have the option to run for a full two-year term in December, during the regularly scheduled Mayoral election. Three Town Councilmembers were considered “senior members” at the time of March’s resignation: Sam Sowards, Roy Lashua, and Arthur Brown. On August 19th, 1937 the Marysville Town Council unanimously appointed Arthur Brown to be the twentieth Mayor of Marysville. As mentioned above, this appointment was technically only for a week, but during the meeting, Brown expressed his desire to fill the position for the full four months remaining in March’s term. Little did anyone know at the time, Arthur Brown would go on to be one of the longest-serving Mayors in the town's history to that point.
The old Marysville Town Hall was a small and cramped building. Built in 1901 for a town of 700, it was originally housed on Front Street, but later moved to 3rd and Delta in 1923, a more central location for the growing town. Attempts had been made by Mayor March during his time in office to build a new city hall, but none had succeeded. The council chambers was a small room, just big enough to fit town leaders, and interested members of the public. These close quarters would lead a casual passerby to liken this weekly gathering to a meeting of a secret society, not the business of a functioning town. Even for an evening meeting, the August heat combined with the extra number of people in the room made it almost unbearable. The scent of tobacco smoke was thick in the air as city leaders considered cigarettes to be an essential part of their meetings. Here in this unassuming room on that hot August evening Town Clerk Henry Pfroom administered the oath of office for Mayor Arthur Brown, something Pfroom had done many times before. At that time it was impossible to see what was ahead for Brown and the city, in just the next few years. To this point, only three mayors had served more than one, two-year term. It was unclear if Brown would even run in December for a full term. Nobody in that small sweltering room whiffing tobacco could predict that Brown would go on to lead Marysville during one of the most intense conflicts in modern human history. He was an unassuming man, and this ceremony lacked any pomp and circumstance. After the oath was administered, and the meeting adjourned, the council and citizens asked both March and Brown to say a few words. March went first thanking everyone for their work while he was Mayor, and saying “I have lived in a dozen communities in Puget Sound, and I can say that I have enjoyed none of them as much as I have enjoyed living in Marysville the last seven years.” Once March sat down Mayor Brown got to his feet, keeping his remarks short by saying “I’ll try to the best of my abilities to push this town ahead.” With that, Alfred March left Marysville for Seattle, and Arthur Brown took the helm. This was just another item on the long list of daunting tasks Brown had taken up in his life. He was no stranger to change and hard work, those were themes throughout his life, that brought him to Marysville.
Arthur Lee Brown was born in Ruskin Nebraska, his birthday however is somewhat of a controversy. Brown maintained throughout his life that he was born March 9th, 1890, it's even printed on his headstone. The Marysville Cemetery, on the other hand, has reason to believe he was born in 1886. This may be a mystery that goes unsolved, but thankfully four years doesn’t make that much of a difference in the grander scheme of things. Brown and his family made the trek to Washington State in the early 1900s, where he met Nora Daniels of Marysville. They were married on December 23rd, 1912, and made their home in Marysville. Once in Western Washington, Brown went to work as a sawyer at various shingle mills in Clear Lake, Marysville, and finally Everett during his time as Mayor. He was a member of the Washington-Oregon Shingle Weavers District 21 Council and served as their President for a period of time. He was later a member of the Everett Shingle Weavers Union and the Everett Order of the Eagles. Arthur and Nora had one son, Morris born in 1916, who would go on to serve on the Marysville Town Council after his father left office. Having gained leadership experience through the shingle weavers groups he was apart of, and various other local organizations, Arthur Brown’s decision to enter politics was a natural and unsurprising one.
Upon taking the oath of office in August, it was unclear exactly what Mayor Brown’s intentions were. He made it known that he would remain Mayor for the full four-month term, but anything after that was anyone's guess. On November 1st, 1937 he issued a call for a caucus to nominate candidates for an election on December 7th. On the ballot would be the Mayor, Town Treasurer, and three town council seats (normally there would only be two council seats up, but since Brown vacated one to become Mayor it had to appear on the ballot as well). Municipal elections in 1937 were very different from today. About a month before the election was scheduled the Mayor would call a caucus. This was a meeting (or multiple meetings) of citizens to nominate candidates for office. In addition to this nomination process, candidates ran on “tickets” which were usually tied to a certain political party. At the first caucus meeting on November 13th, Arthur Brown was nominated for a full two-year term as Mayor. He accepted this nomination on the “progressive ticket” as he was a staunch supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. The Globe remarked that this first caucus meeting was “well attended” and showed “more interested in this election than in any local election in the past six years.” This interest would be so great that a second and third caucus meeting was held later in November, a number that was very rare for a town that size.
Mayor Brown was slatted to run unopposed after the first and second caucus meetings but at the third and final caucus meeting on November 20th, town councilmember Ray Lashua was nominated to run against Brown on the “People’s Ticket”. Lashua served on the town council with Brown for three years and was very active in the Marysville Veterans Club. The citizens of Marysville had a race, and they would prove to be very involved over the next couple weeks leading up to election day. Many editorials and letters to the editor in the Globe encouraged people to research candidates, and vote. The paper extended invites to both candidates to write a column in an edition printed the week prior to the election. Only Lashua took the Globe up on the offer. In his column, he stated that “ he is in a position to know just how much burden the taxpayers of Marysville have” and that he will implement a “business-like administration to serve them.” In the end, Brown would sail easily into victory, much like his political idol Franklin Roosevelt did the year before. Of the 326 votes cast, Brown received 212 to Lashua’s 114. Brown received roughly 65% of the vote, which was a few points shy of Roosevelt who won Marysville with 69% in 1936. An interesting side note regarding the municipal election of 1937, former Mayor A.H. March whose resignation allowed Brown to become Mayor, stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for town council. According to the Globe, after five weeks in Seattle, he decided to move back to Marysville.
In the December 9th, 1937 edition of the Marysville Globe, two days after the election, under the heading “Thanks to Voters” Mayor Brown expressed his gratitude to the citizens for electing him to a full term, promising that he will “continue to work for the best interests of the city.” Over the next two years, he satisfied the citizens of Marysville so much that he ran unopposed for a third term in December 1939. The Town Council had recently changed the laws surrounding the Mayor's position, and the term length was increased from two to four years. The four-year term that Brown was elected to in 1939 would see the world devolve into chaos for the second time in half a century. Hitler had invaded Poland just months before Brown was re-elected, and from there, much like dominos falling, each world power entered the conflict. Arthur Brown was Mayor for it all and oversaw necessary changes to ensure Marysville would be safe during the war. Being on the west coast, there were grave concerns that Japan would attack, which led to increased civil defense protocols throughout Snohomish County. Every family in Marysville gave something to the war effort whether that was a son, food from a garden, or excess rubber. Arthur Brown was not just the Mayor, but also a regular citizen who had a day job, so he understood as well as anyone else in town, what it meant to make a sacrifice for the war. A war that was not even a thought in the back of someone’s mind on that hot August day in 1937 when he took the oath of office. He didn’t set out to be a wartime Mayor, but he ended up being one, and the citizens of Marysville respected him for it.
Much like Franklin Roosevelt, Arthur Brown was not in power to see the end of the war. Brown left office in 1944, a year before his beloved President died, and handed over the reins to Ernest Washburn. Washburn would build on Brown’s solid wartime policies and guide Marysville to peace in 1945, and prosperity as people came home and began to rebuild their lives. Arthur Brown passed away in 1974 and was remembered for the sacrifices had made leading Marysville through some of the darkest days humanity had ever seen.
Historians Note: This will be the first in four parts on Marysville’s involvement in World War II. Mayor Arthur Brown will be an important player in all four parts, so a clear understanding of him as a man, and as a leader will be helpful.
