21 January 2010
Disco Fever
(Symbol of an Era, the Dreaded Disco Ball. Courtesy Hailey and Heather of Atlanta)
Rex took off the uniform after thirty three years to join the investment banking world of Arthurs, Lestrange & Short of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a municipal finance underwriter and originator of financial instruments. He retired one month before two guys named Jobs and Wozniak set up shop to build a curious little computer in their Garage in a place that would be called Silicon Valley someday, and just about twelve months before I joined the institution he was leaving.
The energy of 1976 was spent trying to forget things. I don’t recall much about it, except that we definitely did not want to remember the Draft, or the political killings or the OPEC oil shock that jolted America right down to its even-and-odd license plates.
I might have joined the Navy the same year Rex retired. I recall being willing to do it, even if I was listening to sugary pop music by Elton John and the Jackson Five on the radio. On the upside, people were starting to dance like civilized people again, or at least that is what Rex thought.
I was negotiating with the Recruiter about what date to come down to the center in Detroit and formally raise my right hand. I thought I might do it in December of 1976, and asked if there was any advantage to establishing myself prior to the holidays.
LT Dan Erndel, USN, Naval Aviator extraordinaire and in charge of Officer Programs for the State of Michigan, said there wasn’t.
It was the first time that an officer in the Navy didn’t quite tell me the whole truth, but not the last. When I appeared in January, helping his quota for the Brave New Year of 1977, I realized that entitlement to the GI Bill, Vietnam Era, had expired.
The war really was over. Oh well. No hard feelings, Dan, whereever you are today.
Rex had been awarded a chest full of medals for his service. The list is one that anyone could visually measure the worth of a life of service against: The Navy Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit with Combat "V", National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Secretary of the Navy Commendation, Vietnamese Navy Distinguished Service Order and the French National Order of Merit.
There are a fistful of other unit and service awards that Rex earned, but the ones awarded for personal valor or performance are the ones that measure just how extraordinary his service was.
In the Pentagon, Rex was responsible for oversight on projects as disparate as a worldwide Ocean Surveillance System, the graceful U-2 Dragon Lady, and the civilian personnel of the Defense Intelligence Agency. It was a lot of money, even if there was not enough of it to do what people thought needed to be done. The meetings were bitter and acrimonious, and it may have informed his decision to go home to Pittsburgh, only four or five hours west on the Turnpike from the sodden clime of the Potomac.
One of his last awards was not the first in precedence. It was the the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, which shows just how significant his contribution to unscrambling the budget mess left after the war in SE Asia was concluded, and the new process of making military intelligence respond to the Director of Central Intelligence, the DCI, in his role as pater familia of the fractious tribe of the dozen-odd members of the what is euphemistically called “The IC.”
My pal Mac was one of the charter members of the focal organization that brought together ad hoc panels of budget, collection and estimates into a coherent organization headquartered, at first at the Original Headquarters Building at Langley, and then at the derelict Selective Service Building on 15th Street downtown.
It was an easy walk to the Old Executive Office Building, and the Staff appreciated the efforts of DCI George Herbert Walker Bush in getting it for them.
Rex could easily have stayed on in Washington as so many of us do, converting our service into careers as government civilians or highly-paid consultants.
Rex chose not to do so, and rose in the Firm, being appointed in 1979 to be Associate-in-Charge of Municipal Finance. That was the year the Soviets went into Afghanistan. Major combat operations began against the recalcitrant Mujahadeen in 1980, the year he made Partner-in-Charge of Municipal Finance.
We were all energetic about forgetting things, and were eager to forget the administration of Jimmy Carter, and the hostage crisis and embrace a new Morning in America with sunny Ronald Reagan.
But the year Mr. Reagan came to town was the year that some people became determined to remember some things, and the long contentious fight over what the memorial to the most divisive overseas conflict in American history might look like.
Some said The Wall was an embarrassing gash in the earth. Others just wanted someone to remember.
All the disco music in the world was not able to drown out the memory of what had been spent, and what had been lost, whether it was morning in America or not.
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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