For Norman K. Brown, the U.S. Census Bureau’s once a decade effort to count every person in the country is old hat — he’s been at it for 70 years, since he was first assigned to count households in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood in 1960.
Since then Brown, 84, has held nearly every possible job in a local census office, including several stints leading field operations in Oakland. Over the years, he also has worked as a news photographer, a film projectionist, and manager for the youth program at the San Francisco mayor’s office.
Brown realized early on how important it is to count everyone. The data collected every decade is used to determine congressional and state representation and distribute $1.5 trillion in federal funds, including money for Medicare, housing assistance and freeway construction, according to an analysis by George Washington University. April 1 was Census Day, although the bureau is continuing to collect responses over the phone or online at my2020census.gov. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Tell me about your first census count when you were just 24.
A: I came out here in 1960 from Rochester, New York. It was in the summer and they were doing what we call NRFU, the no response follow-up, so they were hiring people. And I just happened to see the ad in front of the building, the office was on Market Street in San Francisco. So I went in and filled out an application and the next day they call me.
(They were) apparently short-handed like most censuses are when you get to (no response follow-ups). And I enjoyed it, but that wasn’t the thing that hooked me.
The thing that hooked me and reason I keep coming back is because I realized the importance of it, once I started working with programs like the old poverty programs and working in the mayor’s office. And realizing that everybody’s worth some money in terms of the resource that we need to operates schools and businesses and practically everything.
Q: How were you able to get responses that first time out?
A: To get thrown into Nob Hill and (into) the Russian community, I had no experience.
(I used) ice breakers, you know, dasvidaniya. That’s all I know, but what it did was, it showed the effort. So the first man I talked to made it easy for me to enumerate everybody else. Because he would call them and I don’t know what they were saying in Russian and it doesn’t matter. But they would do the question there.
There are no un-organized communities. It may seem that way to people from the outside, but there’s always somebody who has the keys to the community, that most of the people in the community respect, and whose word is good. So you try to make contact with them, and that makes it easier.
Q: What are some changes and things you’ve learned from all those counts?
A: Well remember now, I started when this was all paper, no computers. I think the only computer was that massive computer that they had back east that took up eight blocks or something like that, the mainframe. Everything else was done by paper.
One of the things that I’ve learned and this seems to be slipping away — the education system doesn’t prepare people to answer questions on a questionnaire or fill out an application. And I think that’s even getting worse given texting where people are abbreviating words, first because they can’t spell, so they’re abbreviating words just based on the way it sounds. The absence of cursive writing drives me crazy, I’m old fashioned.
A lot of people don’t realize that you can use the census information to trace your own family. You can do it through the census bureau as opposed to doing it through ancestry.com and other sites like that. In fact, you could get the latest information we have on your family, but you can only get it for your family.
Q: You’ve also worked as a news photographer, lab technician and for the census on their annual surveys.
A: I’ve had a beautiful life. And the census has been part of it. To a lot of people in the San Francisco Bay Area I’m Mr. Census. If they want to know something about the census, they called me and particularly if they’re interested in jobs they call me. And I like that. I like the fact that I’m still recruiting and I’ll be recruiting until we don’t need anybody.
Q: Do you have a favorite census?
A: Yeah, my favorite census was the 1995 tests in Oakland. Usually when they’re starting the census, I’m one of the first people that they call.
Between the decennials, the Census Bureau does a test that’s a miniature decennial to test out the new methods they’re they’re going to use. The ’95 tests was special in this way. I set up the office. The office was perfect as far as I was concerned. I set up my desk on Friday, I got there Monday morning and I had a computer terminal on my desk.
What am I going to do with this, I have never done anything on a computer. Seattle was the regional office, and they sent me to Seattle. And I was there for a week, one finger at a time, step by step on how to use a computer. But it changed my life. When my son picked me up from the airport, we stopped by Sears, and I bought a computer. And I’ve had one ever since.
Norman K. Brown
Title: Supply and recruitment clerk
Current home: Oakland
Family: 10 children, 14 grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild
Education: Chemistry degree from the University of Rochester, studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology
Previous census jobs: Enumerator, crew leader, field office supervisor, lead census field manager
Five facts about Norman K. Brown
- Other jobs he has held include journeyman cabinet maker, Sears sales clerk, post office worker, film projector and laboratory technician
- Was a photographer for the San Francisco Sun-Reporter, a weekly covering the African American community, and freelanced for the United Press International news agency.
- Got involved in politics to overturn licensing requirements to be lab technician because the educational requirements included a California history class.
- First moved to California to work in the film industry, and got to show his photo portfolio to major studios — “I still haven’t heard back from them,” he said.
- An avid reader who says he has read thousands of books, his favorite is The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.
