Oliver Goldsmith Brown IV is a retired oil field engineer who worked on a sailing, commercial fishing vessel as a teenager in the 1950s in the Gulf of Mexico. Brown was born on December 3, 1940, in Morton, Mississippi. He grew up in Morton and later moved to Mobile, Alabama, where he lived with his uncle and aunt. Brown's family had a history of involvement in the fishing industry, and he began working as a fisherman at a young age.