Lewis County man helps many through his many jobs
Ray Schaefer | For The Daily Independent
Jan 2, 2025
Dennis Brown said he has the best job in Lewis County.
It’s actually the best jobs.
Brown, 62, will be the new Kentucky Press Association president on Jan. 24. It’s the latest of his multiple duties — he’s also general manager of Brown Communications, which operates WKKS Radio (1570 AM and 104.9 FM) in Vanceburg, publisher of The Lewis County Herald newspaper (lewiscountyherald.com), the Lewis County Sheriff Office’s public information officer, and the county’s Emergency Management Director, where he’s a storm spotter and the man who activates the county’s outdoor warning sirens.
Brown said there’s a common denominator among all the jobs.
“I have an opportunity through each one to help people,” Brown said.
KPA Executive Director David Thompson thinks Brown’s altruism is known across the Commonwealth.
“If you don’t know Dennis Brown … let me assure you he’s an ‘aw, shucks’ kind of guy,” Thompson wrote. “He doesn’t want credit for anything, he’s that humble.”
Except for college at Morehead State University (he’s a 1984 graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication), Brown has never left Lewis County. He’s never wanted to.
“He’s the person you can depend on,” Anita Bertram, public health director at the Lewis County Health Department, said Thursday.
Brown began his broadcasting career in 1978 at WKKS while attending Lewis County High School and MSU. He later worked at WMKY and WMOR in Morehead before landing a position with WFTM Radio in Maysville in 1982.
In 1985, Brown volunteered to set up a darkroom for The Herald; two years later, he was named publisher. He’s been the sheriff’s office PIO since the early 1990s — a job that includes taking often gruesome crime scene photos for police and coroners.
Brown said the hardest things are going to accident scenes where people he knows — especially children — are involved.
“Motor vehicle collisions are probably bad, suicides are bad, drownings (if the corpses) have been in the water a couple weeks, fires,” Brown said. “I guess I kind of compartmentalized those things; I can set them aside. It’s a job someone has to do.”
If there is a busier man in Lewis County than Brown, the list is small.
He begins every day by 4 a.m. with a two-hour radio shift from his home studio, writes versions of every news story and obituary for broadcast and print, uploads recordings to WKKS’s computer system and spends an hour updating websites and social media. He spends the rest of the day at the Emergency Management and sheriff’s offices, and works two weekend shifts at home or with a portable studio when he’s out of town.
According to world-weather.info, Dec. 4 was a mostly sunny day with a few clouds in Vanceburg, and temperatures reached the upper-30s. Brown was doing paperwork at the Emergency Management office on Court Street at around 10 a.m. when he heard the fire alarm tones drop — a structure fire at 662 Fairlane Drive, where Angie Johnson lives with her dog Daisy.
Brown was about two minutes and a block or two away, so he went to the fire to see if he could help.
“There were a couple guys standing there, I assumed neighbors, and I asked if anyone’s inside,” Brown said. “One of them said ‘no,’ but there’s a dog in there.
“I could hear the dog when I started around (the house).”
After Brown went to the back door, opened a glass storm door and kicked open the wooden door, he saw a dog crate — but no Daisy.
“So I started looking around the house,” Brown said. “There happened to be a flashlight in the utility room. I looked under the couch, under the chairs, under the bed.”
Brown finally discovered Daisy in the corner of a closet.
Daisy
“It was afraid, as scared as I was, I think,” Brown said. “It didn’t want to be picked up, so I grabbed a blanket, threw over it, put it in the crate and carried it out.”
After rescuing Daisy, Brown went back in five or six times and recovered some valuables and pictures. All the while, could hear the fire burning in the attic.
“By that time, firefighters had arrived,” Brown said. “They had respirators. They were able to save the Christmas gifts that were under the trees and some other things.”
Vanceburg Fire Chief David Stafford didn’t find out what Brown did until the fire was almost extinguished.
“I thought, ‘Dennis, you shouldn’t have even been in that place,’” Stafford said.
Brown writes a blog that appears in The Herald and his website, denniskbrown.com, about his two-year battle with colon cancer. His entire colon was removed, but there’s good news now.
“My latest scan was two months ago,” Brown said. “It didn’t show any signs of any recurrence anywhere.”
Original story here.
ADDENDUM
On Saturday (1/3/25), the day the above article appeared in Ashland’s Daily Independent, a house fire in Vanceburg resulted in Brown once again being in the middle of the action.
While working the morning shift at WKKS Radio, he received a call on his Emergency Management line to do a check on a Vanceburg resident from a family member of the resident who was concerned after receiving a call from that resident requesting assistance.
Brown responded and as he was enroute to the location a couple of miles away, heard a fire call for the same address.
He was one of the first to arrive on the scene and saw that a passing motorist had stopped and was assisting the resident at the rear of the burning home.
Brown called the family member back to report the resident was OK but the home was on fire.
It was then that he learned there was a chihuahua named Luna that also lived at the residence.
He began to search for the pet and circled the burning home looking in windows and calling for the pet at the doors. He made a couple of trips around the home before discovering the scared and trembling Luna in dense smoke scratching at the front door in an attempt to get inside her burning home.
The family member remained connected on his phone during the entire search.
Brown scooped her up and made his way back to his vehicle where he placed her and went to report to Luna’s person that she was OK and to allow the family member to speak to the now displaced resident. At this point the resident had been taken into a bed and breakfast unit nearby and was being checked over by a crew with Lewis County EMS.
Dennis and a frightened Luna.
Brown kept Luna with him until the family member could arrive in Vanceburg and reunited her with the family at that time. He then began the task of securing Red Cross assistance.
Brown’s wife Tammy made a post to her social media about the incident and included photos of Dennis holding a frightened Luna in his arms moments after carrying her away from the burning home and again later of a smiling Dennis holding a calmer “thankful” Luna.
Linda Rieman, who lives across the street from the home, replied to the post, “I watched him rescue that dog, he went right into the smoke and came out with that baby, he is a hero, I was panicking praying he would get him (her) quickly. Terrible thing to wake up to, praying everyone got out.”
“But that's just Dennis being Dennis!!” David Thompson added to the post.
Dennis and a calmer Luna.
V V V V V V V V
KPA President-Elect enters burning house, saves family dog then helps owner
By David T. Thompson
Executive Director, Kentucky Press Association
12-12-24
If you don’t know Dennis Brown, publisher of The Lewis County Herald in Vanceburg and soon to be President of KPA in 2025, let me assure you he’s an “Aw shucks” kinda guy.
He doesn’t want credit for anything, he’s that humble. So it’s not surprising that as regularly as we talk or communicate by email, he never said a word about this event.
We were scheduled to talk recently about a couple of ideas he had for convention programs and I made room on my schedule for him to call me to discuss. That call never happened. In fact, even the day after, it was late in the day before he called.
He apologized for not calling me as we had planned. “Yesterday was just a really busy day.”
That’s all he said and as involved in the community as he is – first responder, emergency management, newspaper publisher, radio station manager and announcer — I know a busy day for him is the norm.
But thanks to some anonymous information, I found out more about what made it a busy day.
A house in Vanceburg recently caught on fire while the owner was at work. Dennis responded from his office at emergency management and was first to arrive on the scene.
He found out from a neighbor there was a dog in the house and kicked in the door to save the dog then made several trips back in the burning house to remove valuables and pictures until the smoke became too thick for him to go back in.
By that time, firemen had arrived and were able to save Christmas gifts and some other things because they were wearing respirators.
The fire chief, David Stafford, told me that once firemen arrived, then Dennis focused his attention to the family, getting them assistance from the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and several other organizations.
Chief Stafford wasn’t surprised by Dennis’ efforts and is just thankful he wasn’t injured or burned by entering the house. Chief Stafford said the house was destroyed and thus uninhabitable, so Dennis turned his assistance to the organizations to help the owner, Angie Johnson.
I did trick Dennis into giving me some more information about his community involvement. And he bit. Here’s more about Dennis, him revealing it without knowing I would use it in On Second Thought:
“I’m a trained Weather Spotter and card-carrying Skywarn member and Weather-Nation Ready Ambassador. A few years ago I helped get the county ready for Storm Ready Certification. I’m a member of the Tri-State Area Integrated Warning Team. I’ve been telling school kids about snow days for 46 years. I’m on a first name basis with the entire staff of the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Wilmington, Ohio. And the judge-exec calls me at 4:00 a.m. to help decide if we’re Level 1 or Level 2. Plus, I have the codes to activate all the outdoor warning sirens in Lewis County.
“I don’t chase the storms. They usually just find me.”
Original story here.
