Boyd

by Robert Coram

  Two men ignored him and came to Good Samaritan Medical Center in Palm Beach. Ray Leopold came and sat on the bed and showed Boyd his new cellular telephone, one of the first of its kind in the country. It was one of Boyd’s last good days. He and Leopold had a raucous evening.

  Pierre Sprey flew in and sat on a chair in the corner of the room and talked quietly with the man he had known more than thirty years. There was much unsaid that night. But each heard what was in the heart of the other. These two men were brothers, the original Fighter Mafia who had been victorious in a hundred bureaucratic battles.

  By now letters were arriving from all over the world, dozens of letters. Letters from Boyd’s close friends, letters from those who knew Boyd professionally, letters from pilots and from soldiers and—most of all—from Marines. Many who wrote had never met Boyd. But they conveyed their respect and their great affection and said their lives had been changed by his work and by his example. Boyd never saw the letters. He was too sick.

  On March 8, the day after Sprey visited, Mary called Mary Ellen in Virginia and said, “You better come down. I don’t think your father is going to make it.” Mary Ellen picked up Stephen and drove straight through to south Florida. Stephen was exhausted so she dropped him off at her mother’s apartment and rushed to the hospital.

  Boyd knew that Mary Ellen was on the way, but about 3:00 P.M. that day he told a nurse, “I’m not sure I can make it until she arrives.” He slipped into a coma, and those were his last words.

  When Mary Ellen arrived at the Good Samaritan Medical Center, a nurse smiled and said, “You must be the daughter he has been waiting to see. Where is the family?”

  “What do you mean?” “He’s going. You need to get them here immediately.”

  Mary Ellen called home. But Mary, Kathy, Jeff, and Stephen could not get organized for the fifteen-minute drive to the hospital. Mary Ellen sat on the bed and clasped her father’s withered hands and told him how much she loved him. By then Boyd could not speak, but his hand clasped hers. His Snookums was with him. Mary Ellen sensed how very tired her father was. She leaned over and whispered that she knew he had been waging a mighty battle to hold on until she arrived. “You know, Dad, it’s okay. If you want to go ahead, go. It’s okay.” With tears coursing down her cheeks she told him that he should find the rest and peace he so desperately needed. “It’s okay, Dad.”

  A moment later, at about 5:00 P.M., Boyd smiled. His face relaxed and the grasp of his hand loosened. Mary Ellen felt her father’s soul pass through her and he was gone.

  Epilogue

  El Cid Rides On

  JOHN Richard Boyd—as is often the case with men of great accomplishment—gave his work far greater priority than he did his family. The part of his legacy that concerns his family is embarrassing and shameful.

  Today Mary and Kathy and Jeff continue to live in the two-bedroom apartment in Delray Beach. Except for workmen, no one who is not a member of the family ever enters. One reason is that Mary says the apartment is jammed and cluttered and she is too embarrassed for others to see it. Another reason is Jeff’s collection of snakes and tarantulas and insects. He says that today he has only a seven-foot bull snake and a “few others,” but as he says this, he ducks his head and looks around as if fearful someone might overhear him. Mary worries that word of Jeff’s collection might get out and she wonders how the apartment management might react. Her friends have repeatedly asked her to kick Jeff out, but she can’t bring herself to do that. She receives about one thousand six hundred dollars monthly from social security and a pension, and she drifts along, wondering what will happen to Kathy and Jeff after she is gone.

  Her concern is justified. Kathy’s depression has deepened and her inability to cope with the world has grown. She says she was diagnosed with “schizo-affective disorder” and she talks of the voices she hears, critical and condemning voices telling her what a bad person she is. Occasionally she sees a psychiatrist who asks about her antidepressant drugs and sends her on her way. Three days a week she works at a facility for those with mental disorders. She is afraid to ride the bus so either Mary or Jeff drives her. She is well into her forties, but her anger toward her father is unabated.

  For a while Jeff worked part-time at a nature preserve, but he was let go. He says he lost the job because he is principled and honest and these attributes make people uncomfortable. He is moving into his forties and, like Kathy, suffers from depression. He will not take medication. He says married women find him very attractive and that they frequently make advances but that he always turns them down. His portfolio is filled with drawings of spiders and snakes and insects, truly outstanding sketches. He could sell many of them, but refuses to do so. He spends hours every day lying across his mother’s bed, talking on the telephone. He says Mary has helped him financially but not emotionally.

  John Scott, who now uses only his first name, lives in California, where he works in the computer industry. His hobby is building motorcycles. Alexander, his young son, is named for Alexander the Great. John wanted to name him Alexander Genghis but instead named him Alexander John. The “John” is for his father. His animosity toward his father is such that the other members of the family wondered if he would come to the funeral. He did, but the anger lingers. Now he wants his son to grow up to be an Air Force fighter pilot. Sometimes he quotes his father and sometimes he admits that he misses him terribly. When things are not going well in business, he thinks of his dad’s “sense of integrity and duty” and finds the strength to press on.

  Mary Ellen writes computer manuals and lives outside Washington. Although she is the youngest child, she is easily the strongest person in the family. She handles all the details of her father’s estate and watches closely over his papers and books at Quantico. She has Boyd’s old phone book, which contains an unlisted number for the line between the Pentagon and Dick Cheney’s home. She is very much like her father: direct, painfully honest, and at times loud and boisterous. Mary Ellen is divorced. She sometimes wonders if the depression that runs in the Boyd family might one day surface in her daughter, Rebah.

  Mary Ellen and John Scott, the two children who for so long fought with their father, tried to join the military. Both were refused, Mary Ellen because of allergies and John Scott because of a juvenile run-in with the law.

  Stephen died on June 3, 1998. In the aftermath of chemotherapy, he had a stroke and, like his uncle Bill, choked to death on his vomit.

  Then there are the Acolytes. They remain an extraordinary group as they continue to shape and influence their world. In one sense, they are Boyd’s greatest legacy. Through them, his work and ideas remain alive. Every year or so the Acolytes and more than a dozen of Boyd’s old friends gather at Winslow Wheeler’s West Virginia cabin for a Boyd Weekend. They eat and drink and tell the old stories and they laugh as they remember.

  After Boyd died his family was making plans to bury his remains in Erie when Gerry, Boyd’s older brother, said Boyd wanted to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Mary and the children were surprised. Boyd never mentioned Arlington to them; all he talked about was a Viking funeral on Lake Erie. But Gerry was so adamant that Mary Ellen called Tom Christie and asked for his help. The Finagler did not tell her that most of the available space in Arlington is gone and that it is very difficult to be buried there today. One more time the Finagler came through, a final favor for his old friend.

  Christie lives in Vienna, Virginia, in the same house he and Kathy bought when they came to Washington about thirty years ago. In the spring of 2001, Christie was weeks away from retiring when he received a phone call from a representative of President Bush’s administration. He was offered the job of director of Operational Test and Evaluation in the Pentagon. This was the position created through the efforts of the Reformers in the early 1980s. The sweet irony of Christie’s taking over a job that he indirectly helped create was not lost on the old Reformers.

  Christie’s decisions of the next few
years will have a long-term effect on the defense industry. The happy hour crowd at Fort Myer wondered which Tom Christie would triumph: the ultimate insider, or the Finagler. Then came the war in Afghanistan and they stopped wondering. The U.S. military had the media believing that the Predator, an unmanned aerial vehicle, was the greatest technological advance in years, that it enabled commanders to monitor the battlefield in real time. Christie published a report saying the Predator was thrust into service without proper testing, that it was unreliable, and that the onboard surveillance cameras had severe limitations.

  Pierre Sprey brought to his music recording studio in the Maryland countryside the same unbending ways he brought to the Pentagon. The corporate motto for Mapleshade Studio is vintage Sprey: “Music Without Compromise.” He says the music is “rigidly empirical” in that every piece of recording gear is picked by ear, never by numbers or measurements. He does not use a mixing board, over-dubs, compression, equalization, or reverb—none of the studio tricks to enhance music. It is all analog, live to two-track, and beloved by those who like their music warm and vital and pure. The loyalty of his customers is unwavering. His music is revered by audiophile magazines.

  Sprey’s son, John, is growing up hearing stories of the man for whom he is named.

  Sprey rarely ventures into defense matters these days. All that is behind him. But his swan song in that area is one of which he is particularly proud: the sound of the A-10 Warthog screaming into battle like one of Boyd’s Valkyries. Air Force General Charles Horner did not want to send the “Hogs” to the Gulf; they are cheap, ugly, and slow, and A-10 pilots go around posting signs that say, THERE IS NO INTELLIGENT LIFE ABOVE 1,000 FEET. Much of the news about the aerial side of the war was devoted to the Stealth Bomber. But the A-10 had a bigger effect on the campaign than any other aircraft. It was the aircraft most feared by Iraqi troops. They called it “Black Death.” Iraqi POWs said other aircraft came in, made a quick strike, and were gone. But the A-10 lingered over the battlefield, and when the pilot sighted a target, the deadly thirty-millimeter cannon released destruction such as ground troops had never seen. General Horner said, “I take back all the bad things I have ever said about the A-10. I love them. They’re saving our asses.”

  One day during the Gulf War, Sprey saw a TV clip of an A-10 landing. The aircraft had gaping holes in the fuselage. Half of the tail was shot away and sky could be seen through an enormous hole in the wing. The pilot crawled down from the smoking airplane, then turned and kissed it. Sprey laughed. It was one of the greatest moments of his life to see that the airplane whose design he influenced was the only aircraft in the theater that could have brought its pilot home after suffering such damage.

  Ray Leopold is vice president and chief technology officer of Motorola, where he continues to be an achiever. He was one of three engineers who created the iridium satellite-based cell-phone network and is a much-sought-after speaker at technical and telecommunications symposia. Leopold holds twenty-six U.S. patents and has patents issued or pending in about fifty countries. He is a senior lecturer at MIT. He lives in Arizona and keeps in touch with the other Acolytes.

  As Boyd lay dying, Franklin “Chuck” Spinney wrote him a letter saying, “I will do my best to continue the good work you taught me to do.” He lives up to that promise. Spinney stayed in the Pentagon, keeper of the flame and fiercely protective of Boyd’s ideas. One of the best things written about Boyd after his death was done by Spinney—a piece in Proceedings called “Genghis John.” As brash and uncompromising as ever, Spinney continues on at the TacAir shop, where he works in Boyd’s old office, an office that some think is almost a shrine, what with framed quotes and pictures of Boyd on the wall. Spinney is the most feared and respected GS-15 in the U.S. government, a man whose very name causes defense contractors to tremble. The Pentagon gave up trying to fire him and instead adopted an isolationist policy: ignore him, give him no duties, segregate him from his colleagues, and maybe he will resign. A wall was installed between his office and that of several young civilians. The purpose of the “Spinney Wall,” as it is called, is to keep Spinney from contaminating their minds. He has not been promoted since 1979. The last time he was assigned meaningful duties was 1989. He has received no awards or bonuses. Much of his time is spent writing insightful articles about the Pentagon, which he calls the “big green spending machine” or “Versailles on the Potomac.” He calls the articles “Blasters” and sends them via e-mail to some of the most influential people in government and the media. The man who did not fare well on the writing side of his college boards has turned into a passionate and convincing advocate. His Blasters are not only unshakable in fact and logic (he has never been caught out on a major factual issue) but they have caused change in government. It was Spinney who made the wing problems of the F/A-18 a national issue. Spinney also has become a prolific writer of op-ed columns for the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. He laughingly served notice on Tom Christie that if he doesn’t do the right thing as DOT&E, he gets hosed.

  Spinney is one of three living people who can deliver the “Patterns of Conflict” briefing (the others are Chet Richards and Pierre Sprey), and he drives down to Quantico occasionally to give the briefing to young Marine officers. He and Richards are writing a commentary on the briefing in an effort to make it more accessible. They want to make sure Boyd’s greatest work lives on.

  Jim Burton, the man who might have been a general, moved into the village of Aldie, Virginia, and lives in an old house near the base of Bull Mountain. After he resigned, Congress ordered the Army to complete the live-fire tests exactly as Burton had ordered them. In addition, Congress threatened to kill the Bradley program unless the Army implemented more than a dozen of Burton’s recommendations. Finally, Congress mandated that all weapons systems be tested in the same realistic fashion as the Bradley. One change alone to the Bradley—the addition of a Kevlar lining inside the troop compartment—doubtless saved many lives in the Gulf War. It took almost three years, but Jim Burton won his battle with the U.S. Army. When Lieutenant General Donald Pihl of the Army testified before Congress about the live-fire tests, he said the Army had “learned much” and “much of the credit must go to Colonel Burton for pushing us in that direction.”

  Burton wrote a book called The Pentagon Wars that, on February 28, 1998, aired as an HBO original movie starring Kelsey Grammer. The book’s epilogue was largely about the failures of the Gulf War and was published as an article in Proceedings. For eight months after the article was published, senior Army generals wrote letters taking Burton to task. He used the information in the letters to put together a devastating briefing about the failures of the U.S. military in the Gulf War.

  After he moved to Aldie, Burton grew dismayed at the rapid pace of development that was destroying the rural nature of the Virginia countryside. Loudoun County is the fastest-growing county in Virginia. His ideas of controlling development resonated with a group of citizens, and they asked him to run for the post of county supervisor. “I will run but I will not solicit funds,” he said. “I will not be beholden. You raise the money and I will run.” He was elected and lived up to his campaign pledge so well that a major developer, one of the wealthiest men in Virginia, held a clenched fist in Burton’s face and said, “I’m going to build houses. Nothing you can do will stop me. I am a fighter.”

  Burton looked him in the eye and said, “I haven’t had a good fight in about six months. Let’s see how this turns out.”

  A few months later the developer left the county. “It’s the same game as in the Pentagon,” Burton says. “Except there are not as many zeros.”

  Burton learned from Boyd that if a man does the right thing, it does not matter how overwhelming the odds against him. There always is a way to victory. “No matter what the situation is, no matter how bleak or how dark things appear, how scary, there is always a way out,” Burton says. “It works every time. And it all goes back to Boyd’s ideas on maneuver confli
ct.”

  Mike Wyly bought a farm near Pittsfield, Maine, planted grapes, and made big plans for what he called “Wilderness Vineyard.” But then he heard that the local ballet was in debt and in danger of being disbanded. The board of directors spent more time squabbling and trying to make sure their children had starring roles than they did in good business practices. Wyly volunteered to take over the ballet. He sounded the call to his Marine Corps friends, and James Webb and Colonel G. I. Wilson and a dozen others responded. Wyly put Marine Corps thinking to the ballet and turned it around, and today the Bossov Ballet Theater is a great success story. The Wall Street Journal even did a front-page story about the retired Marine colonel who runs a ballet school.

  Wyly hosted a Boyd Conference the summer after Boyd died, and more than two dozen of Boyd’s friends journeyed to Maine for a week. In early 2001, he called a board meeting to coincide with a performance of Cinderella. Board members and advisors came from as far away as California and Georgia to a small town in central Maine. After the performance, Wyly and his friends visited a bar, where they stood and drank a toast to Colonel John Boyd.

  Every morning when Wyly arises, he asks himself, “What is my Schwerpunkt today?” And every morning he misses not being able to put on his Marine Corps uniform.

  The Wednesday evening happy hour at Fort Myer is still running strong after thirty years. Many of those who attend are getting a bit long in the tooth: G. I. Wilson, Winslow Wheeler, Jim Stevenson, George Wilson, Don Vandergriff, Chuck Myers, Chris Yunker, Dan Moore, and Greg Wilcox. They are laughed at now as old cynics and troublemakers and antitechnology types. But America owes them a great debt. The occasional knowledgeable guest who knows their backgrounds looks around in awe, aware that he stands among living legends. There are nights when several dozen people gather and the beer flows and the old stories are retold and everyone laughs as if it were the first time they ever heard them. In 2001, the Air Force announced that its fleet of some ninety-three B-1 bombers were being reduced to a force of about sixty. “Boyd called that one back in the early seventies,” someone remembered.