tales of a TAFTIE
By Julie Reiff
Michael P. W. Stone, Class of 1942 Only Foreign-Born Secretary of the Army
Sources: www.SFGate.com www.army.mil www.presidency.ucsb.edu PHOTO: Russell Roederer/ www.dodmedia.osd.mil
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Born in London, England, in 1925, Michael Patrick William Stone moved to the United States in 1929. He served with the British Royal Navy during World War II, and received pilot training in the United States. He served in the Mediterranean and Far East as a member of the Royal Naval Air Squadron 1831, which participated in the surrender of the Japanese forces at Rabaul, New Guinea, in September 1945. A cum laude student at Taft, Stone spent five years here, back when the school still had an 8th grade, and was involved in nearly everything from the Debate Team and Biology Club to captaining the hockey squad and serving as sports editor of the Papyrus. Stone began his studies at Yale University before the war and graduated in 1948. He later studied law at New York University Law School and then married Ann Donogh in 1952. He was a founding partner of Sterling International, a paper marketing and manufacturing company in San Francisco in the early 1950s and was vice president of that company and president of several of its subsidiaries, including Sterling Vineyards, from 1960 to 1982. In 1982, he sold his business and joined the U.S. Government as director of the U.S. Mission for the Agency for International Development (USAID) in Cairo, Egypt, where he stayed until 1985. He was later involved in implementing the
Kissinger Commission recommendations in the Caribbean Basin Initiative countries, before being named assistant secretary of the Army for financial management in 1986. There, he co-chaired the Army’s Commission to Implement the Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (GoldwaterNichols), resulting in the most sweeping changes to the Army in years. He served as acting undersecretary of the Army in 1988 and was undersecretary of the Army and Army acquisition executive from 1988 to 1989. He was sworn in as the 15th secretary of the Army in 1989. Under his direction, the Army participated in Operations Just Cause (Panama) and Desert Shield and Desert Storm (Southwest Asia); during his tenure the Cold War victory was finally achieved and the Army reshaped itself for the post-Cold War era. The New York Times wrote that Stone’s tenure “was marked by a shrinking military, the debate over the role of women in combat and by the Persian Gulf war.” He served until 1993 while at the same time heading the board of the Panama Canal Commission, which oversaw canal operations. He was also a director of the American University in Cairo, a trustee of the Golden Gate National Park Association and a fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. Stone died in San Francisco, California, in 1995. j