Rank: Captain
City and State: Nashville, Tennessee
Wife’s Name: Sandy
Captain Ron Pace’s Story
Background
I was born October 23rd, 1940, in a sharecropper’s shack surrounded by cotton fields in the flat Mississippi River Delta land in the extreme Southeast Corner of Missouri. There was no attending physician. My parents, originally sharecroppers from the hill country of Tennessee, had migrated there four years earlier. Our shack, located near the intersection of two dirt farm roads eight miles southeast of Kennett, Missouri, was not unusual for that period; it had no electricity nor running water nor indoor plumbing. We grew cotton which, at that time, was plowed and planted using a team of mules; however, the hoeing (weeding) and picking were done completely by hand. Sharecroppers’ arrangement with the landowner varied according to each situation, but, typically, if you furnished your own team of mules, your share of production would be increased, for example, 60/40 instead of 50/50. In cotton-growing regions, the school year started a month earlier than normal to compensate for classes missed when school was discontinued for a month in the fall to allow children to assist their parents during the fall cotton-picking season.
Cotton bags were typically ten-to-twelve foot long tubular- shaped canvas bags with a shoulder strap at one end which facilitated pulling the bag down the furrows as you picked. Even small children were involved using small cotton bags constructed from fifty-pound flour sacks. A wagon was placed at the edge of the field to deposit your cotton after it was weighed using a hook scale attached to the rear of the wagon. Pickers were paid two to three cents a pound; a grown man who was a fast picker could pick 200 to 300 pounds a day.
My father’s national guard unit was activated two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and he spent the war years away from home. All but abandoning the family after the war, he went to the Chicago area to work in the steel mills. In 1946, the family moved back to the hills of Tennessee to my grandparents’ house. Although our Missouri home was simple and remote, it was luxury compared to eight of us living in my grandparents’ three-room log cabin. Again, no electricity or running water but now it was twenty-four miles from the nearest small town, the last eight miles on a dirt road before you turned onto a rutted lane for the last quarter mile. It was 1947 living in a 1900 environment. As in Missouri, we were sharecroppers owning our own mules and growing corn, peanuts, and sorghum instead of cotton. Our existence was one of almost total self-sufficiency, growing everything we ate, killing and curing hogs, and eating chickens straight from the yard. My first job was driving a mule in a circle around a sorghum mill for the princely sum of twenty-five cents per day.
As a second grader in a class of three, I now went to a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher teaching all eight grades with a total of twenty-four students. Again, no electricity or running water; however, the windows were very tall to catch maximum sunlight, and the school was heated by a wood stove. We all drank using the same aluminum dipper hung on the housing of a hand-dug well. Every boy possessed a sling shot and a pocket knife, both of which we enjoyed using at recess. Perhaps our situation might sound like a disadvantaged childhood; however, it provided a healthy, happy, and loving one.
In the late 1940’s, we moved to the small town of Waverly, Tennessee, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. My mother, five sisters, and I lived in a small three-room house, and, for the first time, we had electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing. Having a rural background, my first money-making effort was trapping mink and muskrats using leg traps in the local creek that ran through town and selling the hides to the local co-op after skinning and board stretching them. From there, I graduated to more urban methods of making money.
I quickly acclimated to town living, going to the local elementary and high school from which I lettered in three sports, captained the football team, and graduated in 1958 at the age of seventeen.
After graduating high school, I hitch-hiked across the United States several times to all points of the compass; eventually I enrolled at the University of Tennessee. In order to pay for college, I alternated working six months then going to the University for six months–it took me six years to complete a four-year degree. The six-month work stints included 1959 working for the State of Tennessee; 1960 being employed at Disneyland in Anaheim, California; 1960-61 fighting forest fires for two seasons in California’s Los Padres National Forest for the U.S. Forest Service; 1962 serving as a construction civil engineer building an aluminum plant; and 1963 constructing a bridge on I-40 across the Tennessee River. I was involved in numerous university activities along with holding the presidency of my fraternity. I graduated in 1964 with a management degree and entered law school at the University of Tennessee.
After finishing one semester of law school, I was broke again and could not drop out of school to work since that would subject me the draft. Since I was unable to work to continue the degree, I was left with the option of being drafted or joining some branch of service. I applied for a direct commission in the Medical Services Corps which, along with doctors and dentists, commissioned others with business degrees to manage hospitals and operations. I completed all the application requirements and requested recommendations from state senators and other influential individuals. The Direct Commission Application was a slow process since it had to wend its way through the slow-moving Washington, DC network. After two months of waiting, I grew impatient and decided to join the military service. I took the Officer Candidate Test for all four military branches and passed all; I selected the Army in part because it was only a three-year commitment. I entered the Army under the College Option Program (College Op) which tested and selected applicants who, straight out of college, would be guaranteed Officer Candidate School (OCS) acceptance immediately after completion of Basic Infantry Training (BIT) and Advanced Infantry Training (AIT) which consisted of a total of twenty weeks of training.
You’re in the Army Now
I was inducted into the U.S. Army on February 25, 1965, in Nashville, and was flown to Ft Jackson, South Carolina, for induction processing. Then I was transferred by bus to Ft Gordon, Georgia, for Basic Combat Training (BCT). I graduated April 29, 1965 and was selected as the recipient of the battalion Outstanding Trainee Award. After a short leave, two of us from Nashville, William Burke and I, went back to Ft Gordon by train for Advanced Infantry Training (AIT) where twenty-three “College Ops” were placed in a special platoon for a more rigorously enhanced AIT experience to prepare us for entry into Officer Candidate School.
During this special AIT training, we bonded as a group and, midway through our training as a leadership-exercise group, we were tasked with selecting one member of our group for a forty-eight-hour weekend pass. We decided to have a drawing to determine who would go. We also decided that each soldier would donate $2 to a fund to allow the selected person to have a good time with the proviso that the winner had to report back and tell all the details of the weekend of fun. Jim Hammontree was selected to be the one to draw the name.
To my good fortune, my name was drawn. The next Saturday morning, I caught a ride to Atlanta and checked into a downtown hotel that offered a 50% military discount. Coincidently, the Playboy Club on Luckie Street was nearby, and I decided to spend Saturday night there. In the early hours of Sunday morning–after a night of drinking, dancing, and fun–I found myself upon the stage arm-in-arm with a line of Go-Go girls dancing their routine. I had brought my civilian suit of clothes but had forgotten my belt. Having lost weight while in training, my pants were oversized. My last memory of the night was being on stage entertaining the audience with the Go-Go girls while holding up my pants with one hand. With a terrible hangover, I caught a ride back to Ft Gordon Sunday afternoon and tried to regale the other College Ops with the stories of the fun I had had. I hope they enjoyed the stories enough to justify their two-dollar donation.
After completing AIT, along with other College Ops, I checked into the Black Angus Restaurant and Motel in Columbus, Georgia, on Saturday July 17th, 1965, and reported to the OCS barracks the next day Sunday, July 18, 1965, as a member of O/CS Class I-66.
Since the structure, rigors, and disciplinary actions of OCS have been documented previously in other classmates’ biographies, I will limit my OCS autobiography to my own unique experiences. We College Ops soon realized that we had been thrown in with a company of more seasoned soldiers; obviously, we twenty-three were used to fill out the class of approximately 200 candidates. Since one was rated by both his classmates as well as his Tactical Officers, we College Ops refrained from openly discussing our recent college experiences since some veteran classmates might feel that we had not earned our stripes. Twenty-three College Ops came to OCS class I-66–only seventeen graduated.
Sometimes the smallest happenings alter life’s trajectory; such was my case. After several weeks of training, the company was at a small-arms firing range. As different groups took their turn on the range, their names and scores were posted on a nearby chalkboard. After firing, candidates would linger about until all had completed their turn at the range. While lounging about, after I had taken my turn firing, I noticed that the names and scores were illegibly written in sloppy cursive writing. Having an engineering background, and out of boredom, I painstakingly rewrote the names and scores in neat rows and columns in block-letter form. A little later, a helicopter landed, and the Commanding General exited to conduct an unannounced inspection. He noticed the neat and well-arranged chalk scoreboard and asked who was responsible for its orderly appearance.
A few days later, I was called to report to this officer who had asked me to arrange and organize a social gathering for him at the Officers Club. This led to several more requests from Colonels and Generals to organize events at the Officers Club during my OCS tenure. Of course, to comply with all these requests from higher ranking officers, I missed some training days in the field; that is why my picture did not appear in our OCS album. By this time, I was familiar with the personnel at the Officers Club.
Later, I was assigned by our OCS cadre as Officer Candidate in Charge (OCIC) to organize our eleventh- and eighteenth-week parties. The first task was to secure dates for the single Candidates, so I polled the nearby Nursing and Secretarial Schools in the area for volunteers. I selected for my date the female lifeguard at the Officers Club with whom I had become acquainted and who, incidentally, looked great in a swimsuit. I assigned the volunteers as the Candidates’ dates based strictly by height and the name and details of each Candidate’s date were passed out during one of our formations.
Other party-related tasks included selecting menus; printing VIP invitations and name tags; developing programs; arranging decorations; scheduling talent events; et cetera. I visited Kirvens, then Columbus’ downtown department store, and arranged for the purchase of small silver plates and had them engraved with “51 Co OCS I-66” to be given to each Candidate as a party favor. I have spoken recently with some of our classmates who still have them to this day.
A couple of weeks before graduation, we were given our branch assignment, and I got what I had requested: the Adjutant General Corps (AGC). At that time, it was so unusual for the Infantry OCS to give an AG commission that, when I went to the base cleaners to have branch patches sewn on my uniforms, they initially did not recognize the insignia.
Upon graduation, the Honor Graduates were announced, and I was designated as an honor graduate, an honor which carried with it my choice of initial duty station and a fast-track appointment to a Regular Army Commission as opposed to a Reserve Army Commission. I requested and received an assignment to the Adjutant General (AG) section at Division Headquarters of the 8th Infantry Division headquartered in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. I thought I had won the trifecta: an Adjutant General commission, a Company honor graduate with choice of assignment, and the opportunity for a regular Army commission.
After a ten-week AG branch school at Ft Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, Indiana, (affectionately known as Uncle Ben’s rest home), I married my fiancée, Barbara Missimer, and, in April 1966, departed on a Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS) ship from the Naval Yard in New York bound for Bremerhaven, Germany. No sooner than boarding ship, with the Statue of Liberty still in sight, I was assigned as Adjutant to the shipboard “Commander of Troops.” I reported to the Colonel who immediately asked that I create a set of “Assumption of Command” documents. Thus, my first assignment was a task that I had never heard of and had no idea how to perform; however, I had been assigned an on-board office with two military clerks, so I dictated the requested set of orders utilizing as much recently acquired AG Army regulatory knowledge coupled with enough appropriate military jargon to give substance and legitimacy to the document. Upon delivery, the Commanding Colonel, after carefully reading the document, thanked me and congratulated me on a job well done. The whole experience was the most valuable lesson learned during my military years. I realized that oftentimes I would be directed by my military superiors to complete tasks which neither I nor they had had any previous experience, and there was no precedent to guide me. Yet, one must perform to the best of his abilities in solving the problem and taking responsibility and ownership of the results.
Nine days later, upon arrival in Germany, I was assigned as commander of the troop train that delivered fresh troops to the different posts through Southwestern Germany. After being sequestered in the hole of a ship for days, the troops were ready to let off steam, so I assigned an experienced NCO to command each train car to preclude fights and prevent soldiers from harassing frauleins through the open car windows.
The Eighth Infantry Division (Pathfinder) was a mixed division consisting of a brigade each of Infantry, Armor, and Airborne, and attendant Artillery and Air units. The Division was headquartered in the beautiful resort town of Bad Kreuznach situated on the Nahe River. The division was arranged in a traditional military hub-and-spoke configuration with the Division Headquarters Company as the hub in Bad Kreuznach and brigades situated on a large perimeter in the nearby towns of Baumholder, Mainz, and Mannheim.
After a short stint in charge of the records section, I was permanently assigned as the Division Special Services Officer, an office in charge of both military and civilian staff. My office was responsible for planning, promoting, funding, organizing, and providing logistical support for all recreational activities pertaining to the health, welfare, and morale of over 16,000 troops and 10,000 dependents dispersed over a wide area throughout Southwestern Germany. Some specific activities included establishing and justifying budgets; monitoring fiscal cost and property accounting; procuring and contracting for supplies and services; preparing directives, circulars, technical letters, schedules and programs; conducting conferences, staff visits, technical meetings and administrative schools to initiate policy; and preparing personnel for efficient program management.
My office was tasked with implementing a recreational and sports program that included 120 company-level intramural teams and forty higher level brigade and divisional level all-star teams in twelve different sports. During this era, every young eighteen-year-old male was subject to the military draft, so the Army inducted thousands of outstanding athletes, including many professional athletes from baseball, basketball, football, tennis, boxing, et cetera. In some sports, at the end the season, an 8th Division all-star team was selected to compete against other European military teams. Eventually, from these teams, a US Army European all-star team was selected in some sports to compete against the national teams of several European countries. Usually, our office was tasked with conducting these goodwill sports tours.
In addition to coordinating and conducting hundreds of sporting events, we had to conduct seminars to train dozens of coaches, referees, and officials for each sport. For example, we brought the famous Adolph Rupp of Kentucky basketball fame to the 8th Division to conduct a two-week seminar to train our basketball coaches.
As the Division Special Services Officer, I was the lowest ranking member of the Commanding General’s staff and sat as a member of the Commanding General’s weekly staff meetings. I soon realized that the Division’s sports teams’ performances were especially close to the Commander’s heart. After all the weekly G-1, G-2, G-3, G-4 reports and various other reports were presented, the Division’s sports team’s report, saved for the last, was the one area where the Commanding General showed the most interest since his Division’s team could compete against, claim victory over, and outshine other Division Commanders throughout the European theater. After all, these various generals were all competing for their second or third star and wanted all the publicity they could get. In my weekly report to the CG at these staff meetings, I always referred to any sports team as “his” team and made sure that I always had a “his” victory to report.
My job necessitated much travel throughout Europe to attend seminars, meetings, and sporting events; my travels were made easier since, as an AG officer, I could initiate my own Temporary Duty Orders (TDY) orders. As the entourage leader when we traveled to other countries to compete, I discovered the job came with its perks: one example being escorted by Miss Sweden for two days and showing me the nightlife and being my escort at the Stockholm sports banquet during our Swedish tour. Perhaps the most noteworthy social event took place in Helsinki, Finland, when our ten-man all-star boxing team fought and defeated the Finnish National team. Finland, being the only free, nonaligned Western nation that bordered Russia, always walked on eggshells during the Cold War for fear of offending the Russian Bear next door. After our all-star boxing team toured Finland, a sports banquet was held in Helsinki. At the ceremony, Russia sent an official to attend to ensure the West would recognize that this was also their sphere of influence. The head table featured me sitting between the Russian observer and Finnish National Sports Director with the respective national flags in front of each of us. This caused quite a notable stir during the Cold War since the Russian and American flags were seldom seen together at the same event. The next morning, the newspapers featured a full-page expose, with a large photo showing the head table with the representatives and the three representatives’ flags, an event rarely seen during that era.
Since Germany was centrally located in Europe, my wife and I spent many weekends visiting the surrounding countries, and it wasn’t unusual for us to spend a weekend or a three-day pass enjoying the Parisian nightlife or hitting the ski slopes of Austria. Our older son was born during our last year in Europe. I spent my entire military career–including a six-month extension–at the same duty station as an AG officer at 8th Division Headquarters in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal and left active duty as a Captain on July 31, 1968.
Life After Army
I left the Army and took a European discharge on July31, 1968, and, for the next month, my family and I toured the Mediterranean countries of Italy and Greece. After arriving stateside, I spent the next sixteen months at the University of Tennessee and received an MBA in December 1969. After a short stint as a corporate salesman, I changed career paths and became a manager in the international department of a major southern bank and prepped for the purpose of managing a commercial branch to be opened in London. However, due to the 1973 oil embargo, the planned London opening was cancelled.
During this period, while employed with the bank, I completed the two years of coursework toward a Doctor of International Business (PhD) at Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta. I left the bank in 1975 to fulfill a one-year doctoral-residency requirement; I completed all required doctoral coursework and passed the oral exams in 1976. Little did I realize that, when I left the bank, this was the last time I would be an employee of a company other than my own. In order to pay living expenses while working on my PHD, I had started a side business of representing companies as an independent manufacturer’s representative, and the company had become so financially successful that I abandoned the pursuit of the doctoral degree and academia altogether.
The 70’s and 80’s were the decades of the rise of the big-box specialty stores. The concept was to roll up fragmented retail industries that were dominated by small mom-and-pop stores by opening large 20,000-40,000 square foot specialty stores with large selections which sadly put the mom-and-pops out of business. Toys-R-Us led the way in the 1960’s by killing off most of the small toy retailers; Home Depot did the same with the mom-and-pop hardware store industry; Office Depot consolidated the office supply business. Many others followed.
In 1979, five of us became minority investors in a small three-store retail chain with the purpose of rolling up the baby-specialty products industry. After fifteen years, our company, known as Baby Superstores, had grown to over seventy big-box baby products specialty stores located in major cities throughout the U.S. with sales approaching $400,000,000 dollars. In 1994, our group went public and was listed as BSST on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Two years later, in 1996, Toys-R-Us was shopping for new avenues of growth and bought us out. Our timing was fortuitous since, years later, Toy-R-Us went bankrupt as a casualty of the on-line retail trend.
Looking for a new career after the sale of our company in 1996, I purchased 310 acres of land within the Metro area of Nashville and partnered with Southern Land Company, a reputable land developer, to develop an upscale gated community of 310 homes called “Laurelbrooke.” The development became a very successful and profitable enterprise.
As a follow-up in 2001, along with the same developer, eleven other investors and I purchased five contiguous farms totaling 1,500 acres in Williamson County, the wealthiest county in the state, located next to Nashville. We intended to develop a self-contained community called “Westhaven.” (See www.Westhaventn.com)
The development concept, called neotraditionalism, was to build a complete, all-encompassing, self-contained community that appealed to the nostalgia of living in a small town with its own business district, schools, parks, golf course, country club, medical center, community center, et cetera. The concept included maximizing human interaction and minimizing the impact of the automobile. The master plan mandated that all streets had sidewalks and that every house had a front porch and alleyways for back-door garages and mailboxes. The whole town was heavily landscaped with generous parks and greenways. Approved builders had to submit building plans subject to a rigorous approval process. The master community plan included 3,100 homes with all the above-mentioned amenities. To date (5/1/2022) all the amenities have been built, and over2,500 homes exist at 100% occupancy with a waiting list for the remainder with the average house selling for over $1,000,000. With the recent purchase of 500 additional contiguous acres, Westhaven is scheduled for completion in 2028. It is unlikely that there will be many future projects of this type and scale in the U.S. due the scarcity of large building acreage and the financial risk of such long-term buildouts.
Since I only have board-member oversight and am not involved in day-to-day operations of this development, I have devoted my time to philanthropic interests and my personal pursuits. which includes my passion for travel as well as my dedication to completing my bucket list.
In 1999, my wife Sandy, my sons, and I established a foundation to benefit the citizens of the small town of Waverly, Tennessee (pop. 4,200), where, as mentioned earlier, I spent most of my early school years. Annual donations are gifted to all nonprofit organizations in the town such as the Arts Council, the Humane Society, the Historical Museum, and the American Legion Post to name a few. Annually for fifteen years we financed free-to-the-public, thirteen weekly summer professional musical shows on the Court House Square sometimes attended by one- to two-thousand people when we had nationally known groups such as The Coasters, The Tokens, and other famous bands. NBC featured us nationally on a segment of “Making a Difference” in 2009.
We were the lead contributor to the creation and building of a small Community College in my hometown of Waverly and have supported all the town’s elementary- and secondary-public schools each year by annual donations to purchase equipment and supplies.
Now in my twilight years, I am working on my personal interests and bucket list. In August 2015, I completed hiking the entire 2,180-mile Appalachian Trail, an accomplishment that took six months. Beware what you put on your bucket list; I recommend nothing that takes over a few weeks. To date, my wife and I have visited ninety-two countries with the goal of visiting all 194 countries in the world. We realize that we probably will never make our goal, but it’s not the end goal but the journey that matters, isn’t it?
As I reflect upon my life, the fondest years are those I spent in the U.S. Army; I am still in contact with good friends whom I made during that time. We were a special OCS class of 144 graduates who set school records, some of which stand to this day. Upon graduation, our initial Army assignments scattered us to the four winds with most shouldering the burden of the Vietnam War while others, such as me–through the luck of the draw–drew cushier assignments. I will always extend my gratitude to those classmates who served in Vietnam with a special acknowledgement to those who fought and carried (and who still carry) wounds, both physical and emotional, from that conflict. I especially revere the memory of those eleven of us who made the ultimate sacrifice serving our country and whose names are enshrined on the Vietnam memorial in Washington DC.
I will always hold dear the Army memories I made with my fellow members of the 51st Company of the OCS class of 1-66.
I was born October 23rd, 1940, in a sharecropper’s shack surrounded by cotton fields in the flat Mississippi River Delta land in the extreme Southeast Corner of Missouri. There was no attending physician. My parents, originally sharecroppers from the hill country of Tennessee, had migrated there four years earlier. Our shack, located near the intersection of two dirt farm roads eight miles southeast of Kennett, Missouri, was not unusual for that period; it had no electricity nor running water nor indoor plumbing. We grew cotton which, at that time, was plowed and planted using a team of mules; however, the hoeing (weeding) and picking were done completely by hand. Sharecroppers’ arrangement with the landowner varied according to each situation, but, typically, if you furnished your own team of mules, your share of production would be increased, for example, 60/40 instead of 50/50. In cotton-growing regions, the school year started a month earlier than normal to compensate for classes missed when school was discontinued for a month in the fall to allow children to assist their parents during the fall cotton-picking season.
Cotton bags were typically ten-to-twelve foot long tubular- shaped canvas bags with a shoulder strap at one end which facilitated pulling the bag down the furrows as you picked. Even small children were involved using small cotton bags constructed from fifty-pound flour sacks. A wagon was placed at the edge of the field to deposit your cotton after it was weighed using a hook scale attached to the rear of the wagon. Pickers were paid two to three cents a pound; a grown man who was a fast picker could pick 200 to 300 pounds a day.
My father’s national guard unit was activated two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and he spent the war years away from home. All but abandoning the family after the war, he went to the Chicago area to work in the steel mills. In 1946, the family moved back to the hills of Tennessee to my grandparents’ house. Although our Missouri home was simple and remote, it was luxury compared to eight of us living in my grandparents’ three-room log cabin. Again, no electricity or running water but now it was twenty-four miles from the nearest small town, the last eight miles on a dirt road before you turned onto a rutted lane for the last quarter mile. It was 1947 living in a 1900 environment. As in Missouri, we were sharecroppers owning our own mules and growing corn, peanuts, and sorghum instead of cotton. Our existence was one of almost total self-sufficiency, growing everything we ate, killing and curing hogs, and eating chickens straight from the yard. My first job was driving a mule in a circle around a sorghum mill for the princely sum of twenty-five cents per day.
As a second grader in a class of three, I now went to a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher teaching all eight grades with a total of twenty-four students. Again, no electricity or running water; however, the windows were very tall to catch maximum sunlight, and the school was heated by a wood stove. We all drank using the same aluminum dipper hung on the housing of a hand-dug well. Every boy possessed a sling shot and a pocket knife, both of which we enjoyed using at recess. Perhaps our situation might sound like a disadvantaged childhood; however, it provided a healthy, happy, and loving one.
In the late 1940’s, we moved to the small town of Waverly, Tennessee, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. My mother, five sisters, and I lived in a small three-room house, and, for the first time, we had electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing. Having a rural background, my first money-making effort was trapping mink and muskrats using leg traps in the local creek that ran through town and selling the hides to the local co-op after skinning and board stretching them. From there, I graduated to more urban methods of making money.
I quickly acclimated to town living, going to the local elementary and high school from which I lettered in three sports, captained the football team, and graduated in 1958 at the age of seventeen.
After graduating high school, I hitch-hiked across the United States several times to all points of the compass; eventually I enrolled at the University of Tennessee. In order to pay for college, I alternated working six months then going to the University for six months–it took me six years to complete a four-year degree. The six-month work stints included 1959 working for the State of Tennessee; 1960 being employed at Disneyland in Anaheim, California; 1960-61 fighting forest fires for two seasons in California’s Los Padres National Forest for the U.S. Forest Service; 1962 serving as a construction civil engineer building an aluminum plant; and 1963 constructing a bridge on I-40 across the Tennessee River. I was involved in numerous university activities along with holding the presidency of my fraternity. I graduated in 1964 with a management degree and entered law school at the University of Tennessee.
After finishing one semester of law school, I was broke again and could not drop out of school to work since that would subject me the draft. Since I was unable to work to continue the degree, I was left with the option of being drafted or joining some branch of service. I applied for a direct commission in the Medical Services Corps which, along with doctors and dentists, commissioned others with business degrees to manage hospitals and operations. I completed all the application requirements and requested recommendations from state senators and other influential individuals. The Direct Commission Application was a slow process since it had to wend its way through the slow-moving Washington, DC network. After two months of waiting, I grew impatient and decided to join the military service. I took the Officer Candidate Test for all four military branches and passed all; I selected the Army in part because it was only a three-year commitment. I entered the Army under the College Option Program (College Op) which tested and selected applicants who, straight out of college, would be guaranteed Officer Candidate School (OCS) acceptance immediately after completion of Basic Infantry Training (BIT) and Advanced Infantry Training (AIT) which consisted of a total of twenty weeks of training.
You’re in the Army Now
I was inducted into the U.S. Army on February 25, 1965, in Nashville, and was flown to Ft Jackson, South Carolina, for induction processing. Then I was transferred by bus to Ft Gordon, Georgia, for Basic Combat Training (BCT). I graduated April 29, 1965 and was selected as the recipient of the battalion Outstanding Trainee Award. After a short leave, two of us from Nashville, William Burke and I, went back to Ft Gordon by train for Advanced Infantry Training (AIT) where twenty-three “College Ops” were placed in a special platoon for a more rigorously enhanced AIT experience to prepare us for entry into Officer Candidate School.
During this special AIT training, we bonded as a group and, midway through our training as a leadership-exercise group, we were tasked with selecting one member of our group for a forty-eight-hour weekend pass. We decided to have a drawing to determine who would go. We also decided that each soldier would donate $2 to a fund to allow the selected person to have a good time with the proviso that the winner had to report back and tell all the details of the weekend of fun. Jim Hammontree was selected to be the one to draw the name.
To my good fortune, my name was drawn. The next Saturday morning, I caught a ride to Atlanta and checked into a downtown hotel that offered a 50% military discount. Coincidently, the Playboy Club on Luckie Street was nearby, and I decided to spend Saturday night there. In the early hours of Sunday morning–after a night of drinking, dancing, and fun–I found myself upon the stage arm-in-arm with a line of Go-Go girls dancing their routine. I had brought my civilian suit of clothes but had forgotten my belt. Having lost weight while in training, my pants were oversized. My last memory of the night was being on stage entertaining the audience with the Go-Go girls while holding up my pants with one hand. With a terrible hangover, I caught a ride back to Ft Gordon Sunday afternoon and tried to regale the other College Ops with the stories of the fun I had had. I hope they enjoyed the stories enough to justify their two-dollar donation.
After completing AIT, along with other College Ops, I checked into the Black Angus Restaurant and Motel in Columbus, Georgia, on Saturday July 17th, 1965, and reported to the OCS barracks the next day Sunday, July 18, 1965, as a member of O/CS Class I-66.
Since the structure, rigors, and disciplinary actions of OCS have been documented previously in other classmates’ biographies, I will limit my OCS autobiography to my own unique experiences. We College Ops soon realized that we had been thrown in with a company of more seasoned soldiers; obviously, we twenty-three were used to fill out the class of approximately 200 candidates. Since one was rated by both his classmates as well as his Tactical Officers, we College Ops refrained from openly discussing our recent college experiences since some veteran classmates might feel that we had not earned our stripes. Twenty-three College Ops came to OCS class I-66–only seventeen graduated.
Sometimes the smallest happenings alter life’s trajectory; such was my case. After several weeks of training, the company was at a small-arms firing range. As different groups took their turn on the range, their names and scores were posted on a nearby chalkboard. After firing, candidates would linger about until all had completed their turn at the range. While lounging about, after I had taken my turn firing, I noticed that the names and scores were illegibly written in sloppy cursive writing. Having an engineering background, and out of boredom, I painstakingly rewrote the names and scores in neat rows and columns in block-letter form. A little later, a helicopter landed, and the Commanding General exited to conduct an unannounced inspection. He noticed the neat and well-arranged chalk scoreboard and asked who was responsible for its orderly appearance.
A few days later, I was called to report to this officer who had asked me to arrange and organize a social gathering for him at the Officers Club. This led to several more requests from Colonels and Generals to organize events at the Officers Club during my OCS tenure. Of course, to comply with all these requests from higher ranking officers, I missed some training days in the field; that is why my picture did not appear in our OCS album. By this time, I was familiar with the personnel at the Officers Club.
Later, I was assigned by our OCS cadre as Officer Candidate in Charge (OCIC) to organize our eleventh- and eighteenth-week parties. The first task was to secure dates for the single Candidates, so I polled the nearby Nursing and Secretarial Schools in the area for volunteers. I selected for my date the female lifeguard at the Officers Club with whom I had become acquainted and who, incidentally, looked great in a swimsuit. I assigned the volunteers as the Candidates’ dates based strictly by height and the name and details of each Candidate’s date were passed out during one of our formations.
Other party-related tasks included selecting menus; printing VIP invitations and name tags; developing programs; arranging decorations; scheduling talent events; et cetera. I visited Kirvens, then Columbus’ downtown department store, and arranged for the purchase of small silver plates and had them engraved with “51 Co OCS I-66” to be given to each Candidate as a party favor. I have spoken recently with some of our classmates who still have them to this day.
A couple of weeks before graduation, we were given our branch assignment, and I got what I had requested: the Adjutant General Corps (AGC). At that time, it was so unusual for the Infantry OCS to give an AG commission that, when I went to the base cleaners to have branch patches sewn on my uniforms, they initially did not recognize the insignia.
Upon graduation, the Honor Graduates were announced, and I was designated as an honor graduate, an honor which carried with it my choice of initial duty station and a fast-track appointment to a Regular Army Commission as opposed to a Reserve Army Commission. I requested and received an assignment to the Adjutant General (AG) section at Division Headquarters of the 8th Infantry Division headquartered in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. I thought I had won the trifecta: an Adjutant General commission, a Company honor graduate with choice of assignment, and the opportunity for a regular Army commission.
After a ten-week AG branch school at Ft Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, Indiana, (affectionately known as Uncle Ben’s rest home), I married my fiancée, Barbara Missimer, and, in April 1966, departed on a Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS) ship from the Naval Yard in New York bound for Bremerhaven, Germany. No sooner than boarding ship, with the Statue of Liberty still in sight, I was assigned as Adjutant to the shipboard “Commander of Troops.” I reported to the Colonel who immediately asked that I create a set of “Assumption of Command” documents. Thus, my first assignment was a task that I had never heard of and had no idea how to perform; however, I had been assigned an on-board office with two military clerks, so I dictated the requested set of orders utilizing as much recently acquired AG Army regulatory knowledge coupled with enough appropriate military jargon to give substance and legitimacy to the document. Upon delivery, the Commanding Colonel, after carefully reading the document, thanked me and congratulated me on a job well done. The whole experience was the most valuable lesson learned during my military years. I realized that oftentimes I would be directed by my military superiors to complete tasks which neither I nor they had had any previous experience, and there was no precedent to guide me. Yet, one must perform to the best of his abilities in solving the problem and taking responsibility and ownership of the results.
Nine days later, upon arrival in Germany, I was assigned as commander of the troop train that delivered fresh troops to the different posts through Southwestern Germany. After being sequestered in the hole of a ship for days, the troops were ready to let off steam, so I assigned an experienced NCO to command each train car to preclude fights and prevent soldiers from harassing frauleins through the open car windows.
The Eighth Infantry Division (Pathfinder) was a mixed division consisting of a brigade each of Infantry, Armor, and Airborne, and attendant Artillery and Air units. The Division was headquartered in the beautiful resort town of Bad Kreuznach situated on the Nahe River. The division was arranged in a traditional military hub-and-spoke configuration with the Division Headquarters Company as the hub in Bad Kreuznach and brigades situated on a large perimeter in the nearby towns of Baumholder, Mainz, and Mannheim.
After a short stint in charge of the records section, I was permanently assigned as the Division Special Services Officer, an office in charge of both military and civilian staff. My office was responsible for planning, promoting, funding, organizing, and providing logistical support for all recreational activities pertaining to the health, welfare, and morale of over 16,000 troops and 10,000 dependents dispersed over a wide area throughout Southwestern Germany. Some specific activities included establishing and justifying budgets; monitoring fiscal cost and property accounting; procuring and contracting for supplies and services; preparing directives, circulars, technical letters, schedules and programs; conducting conferences, staff visits, technical meetings and administrative schools to initiate policy; and preparing personnel for efficient program management.
My office was tasked with implementing a recreational and sports program that included 120 company-level intramural teams and forty higher level brigade and divisional level all-star teams in twelve different sports. During this era, every young eighteen-year-old male was subject to the military draft, so the Army inducted thousands of outstanding athletes, including many professional athletes from baseball, basketball, football, tennis, boxing, et cetera. In some sports, at the end the season, an 8th Division all-star team was selected to compete against other European military teams. Eventually, from these teams, a US Army European all-star team was selected in some sports to compete against the national teams of several European countries. Usually, our office was tasked with conducting these goodwill sports tours.
In addition to coordinating and conducting hundreds of sporting events, we had to conduct seminars to train dozens of coaches, referees, and officials for each sport. For example, we brought the famous Adolph Rupp of Kentucky basketball fame to the 8th Division to conduct a two-week seminar to train our basketball coaches.
As the Division Special Services Officer, I was the lowest ranking member of the Commanding General’s staff and sat as a member of the Commanding General’s weekly staff meetings. I soon realized that the Division’s sports teams’ performances were especially close to the Commander’s heart. After all the weekly G-1, G-2, G-3, G-4 reports and various other reports were presented, the Division’s sports team’s report, saved for the last, was the one area where the Commanding General showed the most interest since his Division’s team could compete against, claim victory over, and outshine other Division Commanders throughout the European theater. After all, these various generals were all competing for their second or third star and wanted all the publicity they could get. In my weekly report to the CG at these staff meetings, I always referred to any sports team as “his” team and made sure that I always had a “his” victory to report.
My job necessitated much travel throughout Europe to attend seminars, meetings, and sporting events; my travels were made easier since, as an AG officer, I could initiate my own Temporary Duty Orders (TDY) orders. As the entourage leader when we traveled to other countries to compete, I discovered the job came with its perks: one example being escorted by Miss Sweden for two days and showing me the nightlife and being my escort at the Stockholm sports banquet during our Swedish tour. Perhaps the most noteworthy social event took place in Helsinki, Finland, when our ten-man all-star boxing team fought and defeated the Finnish National team. Finland, being the only free, nonaligned Western nation that bordered Russia, always walked on eggshells during the Cold War for fear of offending the Russian Bear next door. After our all-star boxing team toured Finland, a sports banquet was held in Helsinki. At the ceremony, Russia sent an official to attend to ensure the West would recognize that this was also their sphere of influence. The head table featured me sitting between the Russian observer and Finnish National Sports Director with the respective national flags in front of each of us. This caused quite a notable stir during the Cold War since the Russian and American flags were seldom seen together at the same event. The next morning, the newspapers featured a full-page expose, with a large photo showing the head table with the representatives and the three representatives’ flags, an event rarely seen during that era.
Since Germany was centrally located in Europe, my wife and I spent many weekends visiting the surrounding countries, and it wasn’t unusual for us to spend a weekend or a three-day pass enjoying the Parisian nightlife or hitting the ski slopes of Austria. Our older son was born during our last year in Europe. I spent my entire military career–including a six-month extension–at the same duty station as an AG officer at 8th Division Headquarters in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal and left active duty as a Captain on July 31, 1968.
Life After Army
I left the Army and took a European discharge on July31, 1968, and, for the next month, my family and I toured the Mediterranean countries of Italy and Greece. After arriving stateside, I spent the next sixteen months at the University of Tennessee and received an MBA in December 1969. After a short stint as a corporate salesman, I changed career paths and became a manager in the international department of a major southern bank and prepped for the purpose of managing a commercial branch to be opened in London. However, due to the 1973 oil embargo, the planned London opening was cancelled.
During this period, while employed with the bank, I completed the two years of coursework toward a Doctor of International Business (PhD) at Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta. I left the bank in 1975 to fulfill a one-year doctoral-residency requirement; I completed all required doctoral coursework and passed the oral exams in 1976. Little did I realize that, when I left the bank, this was the last time I would be an employee of a company other than my own. In order to pay living expenses while working on my PHD, I had started a side business of representing companies as an independent manufacturer’s representative, and the company had become so financially successful that I abandoned the pursuit of the doctoral degree and academia altogether.
The 70’s and 80’s were the decades of the rise of the big-box specialty stores. The concept was to roll up fragmented retail industries that were dominated by small mom-and-pop stores by opening large 20,000-40,000 square foot specialty stores with large selections which sadly put the mom-and-pops out of business. Toys-R-Us led the way in the 1960’s by killing off most of the small toy retailers; Home Depot did the same with the mom-and-pop hardware store industry; Office Depot consolidated the office supply business. Many others followed.
In 1979, five of us became minority investors in a small three-store retail chain with the purpose of rolling up the baby-specialty products industry. After fifteen years, our company, known as Baby Superstores, had grown to over seventy big-box baby products specialty stores located in major cities throughout the U.S. with sales approaching $400,000,000 dollars. In 1994, our group went public and was listed as BSST on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Two years later, in 1996, Toys-R-Us was shopping for new avenues of growth and bought us out. Our timing was fortuitous since, years later, Toy-R-Us went bankrupt as a casualty of the on-line retail trend.
Looking for a new career after the sale of our company in 1996, I purchased 310 acres of land within the Metro area of Nashville and partnered with Southern Land Company, a reputable land developer, to develop an upscale gated community of 310 homes called “Laurelbrooke.” The development became a very successful and profitable enterprise.
As a follow-up in 2001, along with the same developer, eleven other investors and I purchased five contiguous farms totaling 1,500 acres in Williamson County, the wealthiest county in the state, located next to Nashville. We intended to develop a self-contained community called “Westhaven.” (See www.Westhaventn.com)
The development concept, called neotraditionalism, was to build a complete, all-encompassing, self-contained community that appealed to the nostalgia of living in a small town with its own business district, schools, parks, golf course, country club, medical center, community center, et cetera. The concept included maximizing human interaction and minimizing the impact of the automobile. The master plan mandated that all streets had sidewalks and that every house had a front porch and alleyways for back-door garages and mailboxes. The whole town was heavily landscaped with generous parks and greenways. Approved builders had to submit building plans subject to a rigorous approval process. The master community plan included 3,100 homes with all the above-mentioned amenities. To date (5/1/2022) all the amenities have been built, and over2,500 homes exist at 100% occupancy with a waiting list for the remainder with the average house selling for over $1,000,000. With the recent purchase of 500 additional contiguous acres, Westhaven is scheduled for completion in 2028. It is unlikely that there will be many future projects of this type and scale in the U.S. due the scarcity of large building acreage and the financial risk of such long-term buildouts.
Since I only have board-member oversight and am not involved in day-to-day operations of this development, I have devoted my time to philanthropic interests and my personal pursuits. which includes my passion for travel as well as my dedication to completing my bucket list.
In 1999, my wife Sandy, my sons, and I established a foundation to benefit the citizens of the small town of Waverly, Tennessee (pop. 4,200), where, as mentioned earlier, I spent most of my early school years. Annual donations are gifted to all nonprofit organizations in the town such as the Arts Council, the Humane Society, the Historical Museum, and the American Legion Post to name a few. Annually for fifteen years we financed free-to-the-public, thirteen weekly summer professional musical shows on the Court House Square sometimes attended by one- to two-thousand people when we had nationally known groups such as The Coasters, The Tokens, and other famous bands. NBC featured us nationally on a segment of “Making a Difference” in 2009.
We were the lead contributor to the creation and building of a small Community College in my hometown of Waverly and have supported all the town’s elementary- and secondary-public schools each year by annual donations to purchase equipment and supplies.
Now in my twilight years, I am working on my personal interests and bucket list. In August 2015, I completed hiking the entire 2,180-mile Appalachian Trail, an accomplishment that took six months. Beware what you put on your bucket list; I recommend nothing that takes over a few weeks. To date, my wife and I have visited ninety-two countries with the goal of visiting all 194 countries in the world. We realize that we probably will never make our goal, but it’s not the end goal but the journey that matters, isn’t it?
As I reflect upon my life, the fondest years are those I spent in the U.S. Army; I am still in contact with good friends whom I made during that time. We were a special OCS class of 144 graduates who set school records, some of which stand to this day. Upon graduation, our initial Army assignments scattered us to the four winds with most shouldering the burden of the Vietnam War while others, such as me–through the luck of the draw–drew cushier assignments. I will always extend my gratitude to those classmates who served in Vietnam with a special acknowledgement to those who fought and carried (and who still carry) wounds, both physical and emotional, from that conflict. I especially revere the memory of those eleven of us who made the ultimate sacrifice serving our country and whose names are enshrined on the Vietnam memorial in Washington DC.
I will always hold dear the Army memories I made with my fellow members of the 51st Company of the OCS class of 1-66.