A career she never envisioned – Erin Brown balances military with motherhood

As a high school student at neighboring Luverne (Minn.), Erin Brown will be the first to tell you that she never envisioned herself serving as the director of a veteran’s cemetery.

Her path to this role began after she joined the National Guard as a junior in high school. The now 40-year-old Brandon wife and mother of three, went to basic training between her junior and senior years of high school. Following graduation, she returned for her individual training for her job before returning just in time to pursue a degree in commercial recreation and sports management at the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. Three years into college, she was deployed to Iraq from 2005-07.

In 2010, after nine years in the Guard, Brown retired.

“I knew I always liked it, but everybody was always like, ‘You were in Iraq.’ It’s one of those experiences you don’t want until you have it, because when else would you be greasing a Humvee in 100-and-some-degree weather laying under this thing where there’s mud dripping on you? It’s all those experiences you don’t really know you want, and then you get them and it just kind of has turned into a career,” she said.

After graduating from the UofM, she went on to graduate school in St. Cloud and then began working for the state of Minnesota working in veteran education programs. That assignment led to a county veteran service officer position in St. Cloud, but when her husband, Matt, was deployed when their first child, Kaitlyn was born, she knew it was time to get closer to home.

She secured work as a claims examiner with the Department of Veterans Affairs, then moved into a veterans service officer role, and next the manager of field service officers and the Pierre office.

“I was on the run with those guys quite a bit and then our department was working on this project (veterans cemetery). I shared an office with the Deputy Secretary, Aaron Pollard, who was working on all of this.

With excitement growing for South Dakota’s eastside veterans cemetery, Brown knew she wanted to be part of it all.

“I have to throw my hat into the ring…,” she told Pollard. “We talked about it. As a department we had the ground breaking and were really excited for this new addition to the department and then I got to sit down with both of my bosses and HR and said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

She received the position in November of 2020, and from that moment, it’s been boots on the ground for the four-person staff led by Brown.

In Brown’s Monday through Friday position, she’s quick to say there’s no “typical day.”

“Which is the best part about it,” she said. “We have about 100 people that walk in every month, and that’s not one person for a service. That’s all in addition to all the services that we’re doing.”

Last month, Brown said they had 35 services.

“When you think about it, there’s only five working days in a week and there’s 20 days in the month,” she adds

Despite wearing the title of “director,” Brown doesn’t shy away from rolling up her sleeves.

“There’s four of us here and we could go from one minute to running a service to setting headstones,” she said.

The first summer the veteran’s cemetery opened, Brown said they were “crazy busy.”

But she found a way to balance her career with a busy home life that includes husband, Matt, and three children, Kaitlyn, 9, who will be in fourth grade, Carter, 7, and is headed to second grade, and 4-year-old Chloe, who will start preschool this fall.

“We’re busy,” she confirms. “But you just do it.” 

Fortunately, her work largely stays at work, a Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. gig.

“You kind of leave work here or take some along, get it done when you get it done. The thing with everything out here is we work here. You can’t take mowing or that kind of thing with you. Our services are only during the work week, no nights or weekends. The availability of our services is 9 to 3 on the hour during the work week,” she said.

As a family, their children are involved in a variety of sports programs that has them spending time at the ball diamonds, the hockey rink and the soccer fields.

“We got to be at the ball diamond for a good three hours last night,” she notes.

As Brown thinks back to her high school social studies class, she knows the career she’s found was surely not on her radar.

“Even in college I wouldn’t say that because my degrees are in commercial recreation and sports management,” she says. “But I would say it’s one of the most rewarding jobs that you can have.”