Business View Magazine - Nov 2023

279 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 11 More about Brown As he happily notes, Brown has been in the aviation business for nearly two decades. It was from his namesake great-grandfather that he acquired his passion for aviation. The late Mr. Brown was a World War II veteran of the United States Army Air Corps: the precursor of today’s separate branch, the U.S. Air Force. During high school, young James Brown also wanted to join the Air Force. Instead, however, he eventually went to work for a defense contractor specializing in avionics (a combination of aviation and electronics). Sometime later, he found himself working for Boeing IDS (or integrated defense systems) for two years. Yet Brown wanted something that would allow him more family time, and so he opted for a job as a maintenance technician at the New Braunfels National Airport, some 200 miles from Conroe. Working his way up, he soon became a supervisor. He then took a position as the manager of Coulter Field, an airport in Bryan, Texas, for more than five years. That eventually led to the Conroe- North Houston Regional Airport, where he has been at the helm for the past seven years. Brown again mentioned the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners and other local elected officials, as well as the Conroe Economic Development Council. He expressed his sincere gratitude to them all for their airport-related advocacy. “Without their support, we wouldn’t be able to do the projects that we’ve done to grow the airport to where we are,” he says, likewise extending thanks to “the other local communities around us who support us, whether it be through the local agreements or funding agreements, U.S. Customs and all the communities within Montgomery County, the City of Conroe, the Woodlands Township, the City of Shenandoah, the City of Magnolia—all of these communities support the airport and play a role.” CONROE-NORTH HOUSTON REGIONAL AI RPORT