[1] Brown was born on February 13, 1926, in Pittsburgh, where his father worked as an executive for a company that manufactured blast furnaces.
[2] Sitting around their office in August 1969 and brainstorming, Bent suggested that a mutual fund could be created that would allow small investors to combine their resources and gain access to the higher yields available from purchasing a pool of CDs and commercial paper.
[5] They turned the corner after an article in the January 7, 1973, issue of The New York Times brought much-needed attention to their innovation.
[2] Upon hearing of Samuelson's statement, Brown remarked that he couldn't "say that our 'invention' resulted from any brilliance on our part", continuing that "it was actually a combination of the threat of starvation and pure greed that drove us to it".
[7] After his retirement from the financial industry, he joined with partner Chris Gerow in competing in the annual Punkin Chunkin event held in Delaware.
An earlier ancestor was Virginia statesman Richard Henry Lee, whose June 1776 resolution led to the United States Declaration of Independence.