Charles F. Brush
Preparatory School
(High School)
Dansha town, Tigrai region, Ethiopia
Charles F. Brush High School (“Brush High”) was established in 1927 within the South Euclid –
Lyndhurst City School District near Cleveland, Ohio, in the U.S.A. I graduated from Brush High in
in 1969. While I was a student there, my late father Harvey was on staff as a science teacher,
and he continued teaching there until his retirement in the early 1980s. Overlapping that period,
my mother Dolores was a staff member speech therapist for the District schools.
After I graduated from Brush High, I went on to study physics at Carnegie-Mellon University. My
career evolved into mathematical computer programming and establishing technically-oriented
businesses. I've since retired to devote full-time to encouraging deserving students to consider
STEM hobbies, studies, and careers. The robotics competition success of Ethiopian immigrant
students at Yemin Orde Youth Village in Israel has led me to friendly nations in East Africa.
Though my main passion is establishing hands-on STEM enrichment centers, I do get involved
with public schools, on the condition that those schools will operate labs and STEM clubs. My
partner for the Ethiopian Brush school project (my 11th Ethiopian public high school constructed)
is the Tigray Development Association. Located in Dansha town in Ethiopia’s north, the new high
school is both a first (i.e, basic,) and second (i.e., college prep,) cycle secondary school. Thus
there are now two Charles F. Brush high schools, both educating students in grades 9-12!
But there is more than nostalgia in the name choice of the new school. The revered engineer
Charles F. Brush was a pioneer in electric power generation and uses. Ethiopia is now
constructing the world's third largest dam, which will generate six gigawatts of electric power,
using turbines that borrow some features of the dynamos designed and built by Charles F. Brush
in the late 1800’s. Further, the electric power wind turbine farms operating across Ethiopia are
modern day versions of the powerful automated wind turbine that Brush invented and built in
1888 to power his house on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.
It is my hope that in the realizable future, that there will be interest between both the original
Charles F. Brush High School in Ohio U.S.A. and the new Charles F. Brush Preparatory School in
Ethiopia, such that the student groups contact each other, maintain a relationship, and learn from
each other. While the two high schools are separated by more than 11,000 km (7,000 miles), they
are only a few hundred Internet-milliseconds apart.
My Ethiopian colleagues Dr. Alemayehu G/Egziabher Abera (sunglasses & blue shirt, former Dean of the Defense
Engineering College) and Dr. Taddele Hagos (sunglasses & white shirt, Director of the Tigrai Development Association) on
Friday March 27, 2015.
Dr. Tadelle speaking to the Dansha community on March 27, 2015.
A relevant plaque on another high school completed three years earlier, that school in Inda Aba Guna town, Tigray Ethiopia
More information:
Tigray Development Association:
Gelfand Family Charitable Trust:
www.tdaint.org
www.gfct.us/projects