1968

The Year That Changed the World, it says on the TIME 40th Anniversary Special cover.

Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Columbia University, the Chicago 7, Soviet tanks in Prague, Hair, Mrs. Robinson, and Che Guevara populate the memories of many. The Beatles visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. North Korea grabbed the Pueblo, astronauts orbited the moon.

None of that meant much to me, or means much today. It was all far away – as far away as Tet, Khe Sanh, and the A Shau valley were for most Americans, whether or not they understand that. Veterans rarely share experiences with non-veterans, probably because there is so little shared experience.

April 5 and June 5 are not dates seared in my memory as they are for many Americans. May 21 is. Brian Tierney was killed in action near Quang Tri, South Vietnam. Brian arrived “in country” on December 8, two weeks after I did. We were assigned to Company D, 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry. Fifty-three in our battalion died during the following year. In that same year decorations for soldiers of Company D included a Medal of Honor and two Distinguished Service Crosses. There would be 14,590 US, 979 allied, and – belying one of many cherished myths of that war – 70,695 soldiers of the Republic of South Vietnam who died in combat in 1968. It was a year in which we won on the ground and were sold out at home.

I was a Platoon Leader. Brian, who was 19, (I was just 21) became my RTO (he carried my radio). We were in the An Lao valley in for Christmas. In Quang Tri for Tet, I dragged Brian where he quite rightly didn’t want to go. When 122 mm rockets were screaming in on Route 9 southwest of Khe Sanh, we got as deep as possible in our foxhole. We were bombed by a “friendly” F-100 in the A Shau. On a starry night the ground shook while we watched an arc light strike down the valley. We pitched a tent of two ponchos together nearly every night. When I became the company executive officer in May, Brian remained in the third platoon.

On May 21, the battalion’s commander, flying overhead, thought he saw an enemy soldier. Inexplicably, he decided it would be a good idea to drop a couple of infantrymen in to investigate, and so stopped by the nearby Company D for volunteers – one of whom was Brian.

The official citation for Brian E. Tierney’s Distinguished Service Cross reads:

For extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations involving conflict with an armed hostile force in the Republic of Vietnam: Specialist Four Tierney distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous actions on 21 May 1968 while serving as a radio telephone operator near Quang Tri City. Specialist Tierney and two other soldiers entered a small village to capture a Viet Cong whose position had been spotted from a helicopter. When the point man saw the enemy crouching in a thicket and ordered him to surrender, the communist started to stand up as if to give himself up, but suddenly threw a grenade that he had been concealing. Seeing the deadly missile land a few feet from himself and his companions, Specialist Tierney shouted a warning and lunged towards the grenade to shield the others from the blast. Specialist Tierney was mortally wounded when the grenade exploded, but by his selfless act he saved his companions from injury. Specialist Four Tierney’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty, at the cost of his life, were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

Brian’s father wrote me in June: “Brian arrived home and was buried in our little cemetery here in Roxbury on June 5. He had many friends, and there are a great many people in the area who appreciate what he has done for his country...We are greatly consoled by your words about Brian as a person and as a soldier. We have tried to instill good ideals in our children, and a sense of responsibility and conscientiousness to duty. Above all, especially while over there I wanted him to be a good soldier, and according to your letter and that of Capt. Kent and SP4 Dyer, he was just that. Thank you for the copy of the proposed citation. It seems he has gone beyond my highest expectations by his gallant deed.

Thank you for being a friend of Brian...We wish you all safety and well-being, and pray for the end to this and all conflicts as soon as possible.

May God bless you."

Brian E Tierney is memorialized on Line 2 of Panel 65E on the Vietnam Memorial and in the hearts of his friends and comrades forever.

A Personal History of Computing, Part 4

The road onward from Ski-U-Mah went through Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, coincidentally my birthplace, but a stop in 1973 because it was the world headquarters of the Aluminum Company of America, aka ALCOA. My BS in Marketing was going to make me a salesman – an interesting turn of phrase.

Later in the year, after training and orientation that took me all over the country to ALCOA fastener, sheet, primary (ingot), extrusion, and forging plants, I landed in the Bettendorf, Iowa sales office. The following years weren’t really the best, but there were moments. First child Heather came along in 1974, while I was unselling aluminum. Unselling? Yup, that was a time of “commodity shortages” including aluminum, and my job was literally to make ALCOA’s customers as miserable as possible. Turns out that’s a pretty good way to make a salesman miserable, too. Raising prices? Not the half of it. Changing the product mix; dropping simple extrusions for complex ones. Winnebago wants to extrude its own parts from ingot? Forgetaboutit!

Anyway, back on topic. Not much computer stuff going on. Typewriters. Calculators. Green bar computer paper mailed out periodically with numbers printed on it. A big mainframe was spewing out nunbers showing me I wasn’t making life hard enough on my customers. They weren’t taking their low-margin business over to Reynold or Alcan fast enough. It finally got me fired.

So I went home. Ok, they say you can’t, and maybe they are right, but the next four years weren’t in rural western Minnesota weren’t so bac. Courtney’s birth interrupted a golf game in 1977, I was a Jaycee, in a bowling league, a golf league, a softball league, and Co-chair of the Republican Party in the Sixth Congressional District. I was also selling real estate and managing farms, which is where computing came in. Renting land, cash or share, sometimes managing a “custom farming” operation. Negotiation, buying, selling – and contracting to sell – grain, keeping records. Periodically reporting to owners. The limit to income was the record keeping and reporting one person could do with an electric typewriter, carbon paper, a calculator, and a pencil. I was maxed out.

That’s when I found the IMSAI 8080. S-100 buss, Intel 8080 processor. Later Mathew Broderick’s home computer in War Games (1983). I’m not sure where I saw it. Perhaps an ad in Popular Electronics? Anyway, all that led to my first report dealing with computing, productivity, and business processes – a proposal to the Klein National Bank to finance a small business computer. It didn’t fly. Though they never said so, I’m pretty sure they thought I was “round the bend.” Little computers? In small businesses? Print letters and reports? Nonsense. Certainly nothing on which to risk the bank’s money. It was a green eyeshade era.

That little roadblock eventually took me back to the big city, but not before a campaign for the State Senate.

That, as they say, is another story. But not part of these computer tales.

Memories Live On

Today, April 26, is our fourth Wedding Anniversary. I can’t say what we would have done. Something special for certain – every day was special.

We went out in Monterey on Jeannie’s sixtieth birthday, her last. We were back at Paddy’s at Chateau Elan in Braselton Georgia in October, one of Jeannie’s favorite places. That same weekend, we met friends – Martin, Mike, daughter Courtney, Murphy was there, too – after Petit Le Mans. That was the last time Jeannie was well enough to go out.

I’m thinking today of what was. But I can’t help thinking, too, of what could have – would have – been.

Many years ago, Jeannie gave me a book called “Love in the 90’s” about the love between a couple who were able to grow old together. It was inscribed in her hand in the flap.

“Tom, my love – Merry Christmas,” she wrote. “I am looking forward to growing old with you. Someday there could be a book about us like this one. Your Jeannie.”

Of course there won’t be that book, but there are – and will be – others. There were only three anniversaries together after our wedding in Las Vegas, but there were many stories, many wonderful times.

The stories and times began years before this scene from that April day in 2004; the memories will go on forever.