DANBURY, CONN. — A film biography by Western Connecticut State University faculty member Dr. JC Barone about the life of Albert “Doc” Brown, the oldest survivor of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines during World War II, will be screened at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2014, in Science Building Room 125 on the university’s Midtown campus, 181 White St. in Danbury. Admission will be free and the public is invited.

Barone, an associate professor of communication and media arts at WCSU, is the producer, director and editor of “Major ‘Doc’ Brown.” He observed that the film, which runs 60 minutes, exposes the horrors of war and bears witness to the strength of the human spirit.

The Veterans Day screening of the film will recount the story of Brown’s experience as a survivor of the harrowing 65-mile march in April 1942 that claimed the lives of as many as 11,000 of an estimated 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners forced in searing heat to trudge to an internment camp following the fall of the Philippines to the invading Imperial Japanese Army. His subsequent ordeal of chronic malnourishment, recurring beatings and more than a dozen illnesses as a prisoner of war in the Philippines and Japan left him so severely emaciated and disabled when he was freed in September 1945 that he remained hospitalized for two years after the war.

Yet while the 40-year-old major was given a poor prognosis for a long life upon his release from captivity, Brown lived for another 65 years to pursue a successful real estate career in California and become the patriarch of five generations including two children, 12 grandchildren, 28 great-grandchildren, and 19 great-great-grandchildren. By the time of his death in Illinois at the age of 105 in August 2011, Brown had been recognized by the veterans organization American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor as the oldest survivor of the Bataan Death March.

The Nebraska native and former dentist was called to service in in the U.S. Army in 1937 and was stationed in the Philippines when Japanese forces invaded the island nation following the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. In his later years, Brown began to share his account of the atrocities he witnessed as fellow American prisoners perished during the Bataan Death March and prolonged internment in Japanese prison camps, victims of summary executions, starvation, dehydration and disease. His recollections, drawn in part from notes in the journal he secretly kept during his imprisonment, provided the basis for the 2011 biography titled “Forsaken Heroes of the Pacific War: One Man’s True Story,” co-authored by Kevin Moore and Don Morrow.

For more information, contact the Office of University Relations at (203) 837-8486.

Western Connecticut State University offers outstanding faculty in a range of quality academic programs. Our diverse university community provides students an enriching and supportive environment that takes advantage of the unique cultural offerings of Western Connecticut and New York. Our vision: To be an affordable public university with the characteristics of New England’s best small private universities.