Brown Vows to Be Activist for Veterans : Cabinet: Appointment of ex-Marine who was wounded in Vietnam is widely applauded. He will inherit a trouble-plagued health care network.

WASHINGTON —  He’s hardly a household word, but Jesse Brown, the 48-year-old former Marine who Thursday was nominated as secretary of veterans’ affairs, has legions of friends in veterans’ groups and on Capitol Hill.

“He’s a quiet doer,” said one congressional aide. “He is soft-spoken but firm.”

Brown, the second African-American chosen for a Cabinet post by President-elect Bill Clinton, worked his way up the ranks to become executive director of the Washington headquarters of the Disabled American Veterans.

In Vietnam he suffered a shattered right arm as he advanced with his unit through a rice paddy near Da Nang early in the war. As a result, he now wears a brace on that arm and extends his left arm for handshakes.

Since his discharge in 1966, he has spent his life in the bureaucratic trenches as an advocate for other wounded comrades-in-arms. In that capacity, he worked both with the White House and Congress, doing his job for the DAV and earning accolades along the way.

Rep. G. V. (Sonny) Montgomery (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, reacted to Brown’s appointment with these words: “Excellent. The best possible choice to lead the VA in these crucial times.”

Commander-in-chief John M. Carney of the Veterans of Foreign Wars was almost as enthusiastic, saying: “Whether fighting side by side with his fellow Marines in Vietnam or fighting for his fellow veterans in Congress, Jesse Brown has a long and distinguished record of service to his country.”

The Cabinet post is vacant now because the former secretary, Edward J. Derwinski, was ousted during the presidential campaign for angering veterans’ organizations by his tendency to be too abrupt.

Brown, apparently alluding to his predecessor, declared: “I will be a secretary for veterans affairs, not secretary of veterans affairs.”

He then proceeded to outline an activist credo as he prepares to serve 27 million Americans who have served in the armed forces.

“We will move forward aggressively,” Brown said. “We will be innovative and we will be pro-active, not reactive.”

Brown faces a staggering task. The veterans’ health care network, which costs $14 billion a year and is the largest of its kind in the United States, has enormous financial problems.

Clinton has said that the nation can continue to “gradually bleed it dry and let it go broke or restructure the health care network to make it work at lower cost for more people.”

While veterans would prefer to keep their own system of medical care, the movement toward a national health care system might result in integrating it with other public health services.

The shrinking of the armed forces, which will create a new wave of veterans, also will spur demands for training, education and other services for the men and women being dismissed from the post-Cold War military.

Brown will be in charge of $35 billion in outlays, although the largest shares of that go for compensation and pensions to veterans and their survivors. At the DAV headquarters, he presided over a $35-million budget.

Brown grew up in Chicago, attended Hyde Park High School on the city’s South Side and immediately entered the Marine Corps after his graduation in 1963.

After his Vietnam service, he returned to Chicago and went to work for the DAV as a service officer, helping other veterans and their families with benefit claims and appeals.

At the same time, he attended Chicago City College, receiving an associate degree with honors in 1972 and then attending Roosevelt University for a year. He was promoted to a supervisory position in the DAV’s Washington office in 1973.

As head of the DAV’s National Appeals Office, he argued cases before the Board of Veterans’ Appeals and won a record number of them. Brown also directed his organization’s administrative review effort, which won more than 70% of its claims by discovering errors made by the VA in processing the cases.