CLASS NOTES moved half the family up to southern Maryland (St. Mary’s county). I would’ve happily stayed in the Hampton Roads area, but since she outranks me, I have to follow orders. She’s now the director of nursing services at NAS Patuxent River Medical Clinic. Our youngest two, Olivia and Isabel, were also forcibly relocated and attend St. Mary’s Ryken High School here. Isabel keeps telling me that she’d consider VMI, if only they had a girls lax team?! We left two of our sons, Parris and Brent III, in Norfolk, where one is a professional auto mechanic, and the other is studying to be a photographer. My oldest son, Rhys, graduated from West Point last year and is currently serving as a combat engineer at Fort Bragg. He should be off to Afghanistan in the next few months. Speaking of West Point, Tracy Burke also had a son there, and we joined forces to root for the ‘whole damn team’ at the last two USMA-VMI football games. As for me, after an extensive background check that included glowing character references provided by Greg Bond and Kelley Dillenberger, I was finally cleared to fly helicopters for the Maryland State Police. It’s been busy but satisfying work so far – already helped capture a criminal and flew a few medevacs to the Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore and Children’s Hospital in D.C. We recently had a great visit with Linda and Kurt Minne. Kurt is temporarily in D.C. working with the Air Force IG. Tried to get Rich Williams over to the house this summer, since we’re practically neighbors, but couldn’t work it out due to his heavy travel schedule. I’m only about an hour out of Washington and would look forward to seeing any classmates who are passing through or are ‘permanently assigned’ close by. RAH VA MIL and S/F, Brent” (Agent’s Note: Great update, Brent. I will look you up in/around Pax soon! Ryken has a great lacrosse program.) Thanks for the great notes, gents. We are a fun bunch; others are jealous. Until next time, Semper Fi, Matty D ’85
’86
Clint Hubbard
August always reminds me of that fateful day when we matriculated at VMI – August 18, 1982. Here’s a sobering thought to hit you right between the eyes: the Rats matriculating this August were likely born around 1994 or so. Dang; you boys are getting on in years! Our lead-off batter this quarter is a blast from the past: it’s from Rob Johnson. Rob noted it was his first “check in” in 25 years.
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Nonetheless, it’s good to hear from a BR missing for so long. The Tim Perez-Reader’s Digest version is BR Johnson spent 20 years in the Air Force and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2006. Rob offers that most of his career was spent in the “space-related intelligence field.” After retiring in 2006, BR Johnson joined the Office of the Director of National Intelligence doing Congressional Affairs Work. Recently, he changed jobs and was selected to be the Deputy Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, and ultimately promoted to SNIS (senior national intelligence service) in July 2012. Rob works out of a secure location in Langley, Virginia and says he’s really enjoying the work and new position. On the personal front, BR Johnson got married in 1988 to his high school sweetheart, Sharon, who is a graduate of UVa and they live in the Mount Vernon area of northern Virginia. Rob says he was fortunate in that he didn’t have to move too much while in the USAF and given that he grew up in the DC area he feels right at home. Now that all of our beltway bandits know he is in the area, be on the lookout for him. Rob and I shared a good laugh about BR Johnson having had the dream vehicle for a VMI first classman – remember he had a van! As Rob noted, the sofa in the back was not secured and like many of us, he wonders sometimes how he ever reached the ripe old age of 30 even. Rob closed with two great tales – one about him and Keith McKenzie doing a post graduation roadtrip in Texas with a keg of beer and wearing their VMI coatees with shorts. That was funny to imagine. Then Rob got serious and noted that he is “alive and well, but very much misses his friends from VMI; no more so than Gary Yap.” BR Johnson noted that he and Gary went to Aircraft Munitions Maintenance School together after graduation where they became very good friends. Rob continued that “In fact, Gary and I were both on leave in northern Virginia over the holidays in 1987, when I got engaged and Gary and I went out celebrating. He and I found the band that ended up playing at the wedding reception while stumbling around the bars in Old Town, Alexandria. He was a great guy.” Well said, BR Johnson and thanks for a great update; it’s nice to have you back. Speaking of Keith McKenzie, are you out there, Keith? Rob mentioned that Keith was an Aircraft Maintenance Officer and may have gotten married in 1992. After that, he must have taken to hiding out with Jim Urie and Roman Malavet. C’mon, fill in the blanks, BR. Briefly, here are a couple of quick profes-
sional updates from the web courtesy of LinkedIn. Henry Tabur is now Sales Operations Manager at ExaGrid Systems. Perhaps the big man will write in and fill in the blanks for us. It should also be noted that Henry’s son is attending the VMI of the North on the shores of the Hudson River in New York. Glen Ralston (the last time I saw him was on page 245 in the 1986 Bomb) is now the Regional Maintenance Manager for Machining Operations at Texas Machining Operations. The word is he’s in or near San Antonio and looking for BR Jeff Ax to take him to the wonderful restaurant with the owl motif symbol. How ‘bout some details, guys? The web is also the source of great entertainment and political debate. Usually it starts on Facebook with Sean Poremba on the left and Jeff Smiley on the right – one of them lobs a bomb at the other and the games are on. Playing the role of rabble-rouser is Chuck Steenburgh who relishes the opportunity to swim upstream and stir the pot. Chuck will take a contrary position just to be contrary. From their posts, BR Poremba appears to oppose motherhood, baseball and the American way, while BR Smiley seems to embrace fascism, the Taliban and totalitarianism in any form. The best part of all is that they seem to have a good time with one another, as well as those others who chime in. For the record, I think both of them cheered for the Team USA in the Olympics. If things ever get to a point that they need a reconciliation, a good suggestion would be that they could have a kiss-in at Moore’s Country Store followed by buying each other a couple of # 1 hot dogs all the way. I’ll probably be in deep # 2 if I don’t advise that they go easy on BR Moore’s chili. To borrow that oft-repeated phrase from Dave Grimm, “I’m just sayin’.” Conspicuous in his absence from the political discourse is John Hart. BR Hart, along with Ben Walker and Jon Aycock are undoubtedly gearing up for football season with the Redskins and RGIII. When the Olympics were on TV, we were watching the wrestling one night and my wife was a bit in awe of the wrestlers as she’d never seen a wrestling match before. (They don’t show wrestling on the Food Network or Home & Garden TV.) Anyway, I told her to let me know if one of the wrestlers ever picked the other one up over his head and slammed him down like we saw Benny Walker do a few times in Cocke Hall. Remember the famous match between Ben and Tony Gentile from JMU? (Ben won.) I’ll go on record as saying that Benny Walker is one of the greatest natural athletes I’ve ever seen in any sport. Of late, BR Walker has been coaching his youngest son’s baseball team and tells
VMI ALUMNI REVIEW