Alumni Profiles

Air Care Verne Brown '60 founded a firm to monitor volatile gases By Kristin Duisberg Also read a longer version of this story

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When a certain type of industrial accident makes the news, Verne Brown '60 knows chances are good he'll get a phone call.

As president and chairman of ENMET Corp., a manufacturer of vapor and gas detection systems, Brown is a leading authority on explosion accidents that happen as a result of a buildup of toxic gases in confined spaces. Twice a year, on average, he serves as an expert witness in lawsuits, typically on behalf of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. From sewer line explosions to cases where workers have perished inside cement trucks, his role "is to make sure the lawyers don't get away with silly science," he says.

Brown grew up in post-Depression-era New Hampshire. His father drove a truck for the Elliott Rose Company in Madbury, N.H.; his mother was a housekeeper at Congreve, which allowed him to enroll at UNH on a "staff scholarship" following three years of Marine Corps service in the Korean War. A standout athlete and high school valedictorian, Brown played hockey and football at UNH, and when he graduated in 1960, he was the first to achieve a perfect 4.0 in electrical engineering.

After graduation, a National Electronics Conference scholarship took him to the University of Michigan, where he earned master's degrees in engineering and physics and then a doctoral degree in electrical engineering. Brown formed ENMET in 1970, the same year that both OSHA and the EPA were created. He says the timing was no coincidence. "I sensed an era of environmental concern coming," he explains. "While my company's products weren't glamorous, they contributed to an awareness of environmental and air quality issues that hadn't existed before and that is hard for us to imagine not existing now."

Gas and vapor monitors are, in essence, a high-tech—not to mention humane—version of the canaries used as warning systems for early coal miners. Today, ENMET instruments monitor the presence of volatile gases in spacecraft, hospitals, tunnels below Walt Disney World and the grand ballrooms of Canard Cruise Line Princess ships.

Though Brown has called Ann Arbor, Mich., home for nearly half a century, his ties to the Seacoast remain strong. He is looking forward to his 50th Reunion next June, an occasion he has marked by establishing an endowed scholarship, the Verne R. and Kay W. Brown Electrical and Computer Engineering Scholarship Fund. Brown's hope is that the scholarship will make it possible for a New Hampshire resident who might not otherwise be able to attend college to enjoy some of the same successes he had at UNH, and chart a positive course for his or her future. "I loved my UNH education," he says. "This is the place where it all began."