LIVES OF MEANING & SUCCESS: A TRIBUTE TO TOM RILEY

WRITTEN BY R-MA PRESIDENT

BRIGADIER GENERAL DAVID C. WESLEY, USAF, RET

My left boot strikes the ground as I step from the F-150, and I close my eyes for the brief prayer that has become my morning ritual on arrival to campus during these long months of the pandemic: “Lord, please don’t let me do anything today that can hurt my wife.” This, because the doctors have told us that she is immunocompromised, and my careless failure with my mask or maintaining sufficient distance from others could lead to my bringing home the virus that would potentially be life-threatening to my wonderful wife of 25 years.

I shoulder my backpack and start around the back side of Sonner-Payne Hall where the steps lead up into the cross-hall, the centerpiece of daily life on the ground floor of this grand building which is now almost 100 years old. It is early, and the light streaming from the stairwell window is my beacon to guide the walk up to the entryway. I smile as I see the daily constant of these walks: a man stands in the second-floor window, looking up into the stairwell. He is gesturing and he may be shouting. He glances out the window and waves to me. I grin and wave back - it’s my colleague and friend, Tom Riley. He’s been up all night watching over the boys who sleep in Sonner-Payne, and now he’s grousing at them to get down those stairs in the right uniform and over to Turner Hall for breakfast.

Stepping into the building, I realize he’s not really shouting...it’s more of a gruff growl toward this student, or a joke to that one. A brief comment about a uniform correction or a reminder of something the cadet needs to remember to do today. This scene having been repeated nearly every day in my first five years on “The Hill”, I’ve come to realize that Tom’s approach is precisely what these young leaders need as they begin their day of study, exercise, and most importantly, another step toward growing into the young men they will soon become.

Tom’s like me: an Air Force veteran, having been a security policeman and later a security forces member (the name adopted by Defenders later in our careers). I believe he’s about my age, but that’s vanity; I later learn that Tom was 11 years my senior. The shared experience of Air Force service is a powerful bond between us, despite the age difference. We both grew up under supervisors who taught us that “if you were on time, you were LATE.” I admired Tom all the more when I learned that he was part of that remarkable generation of Airmen who’d served in Vietnam; they had a legendary courage and fierce determination to serve a country that, in too many cases, did not appreciate them when they came home. Our common heritage became a routine topic for our discussions and I grew to see Tom as the embodiment of the NCOs who’d helped to raise me as a young lieutenant in the 1980’s - men who knew the hard truths young officers had not been issued with the gold bars they wore on their shoulders.

Having completed an Air Force career and a stint with the Department of Corrections, Tom was in his 19th year as an R-MA Cadet Life Supervisor when people began to die from this strange new virus. Like so many other changes, Tom seemed to take the new rules in stride, working hard to keep the boys safe and on schedule each day, so seeing him in that stairwell became one of the bellwethers of my day.

We have come, in the course of my time at the Academy, to tell the world that we prepare young people for lives of meaning and success. It is a simple sentence that conveys a great deal in a few words. We teach and train and exercise in one of the most contentious times in the history of our Republic. We accept children from all over the world, from wealthy families and from those who are without the funds even to pay for a student expense account. Our students are Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, atheists, and many other faith groups. They come from political systems like ours and from governments that are at war with the governments of their classmates - and still, we pray in one Chapel, eat in the same dining hall, and we cheer for the Yellow Jackets when they take the field or the court. In these ways, we are so much like those who lived and studied here for the past 13 decades. We are trying to grow up and get better at life, so that we can, individually and collectively, live lives of meaning and success.

For me, guys like Tom Riley are the sort of model I have patterned myself after throughout my military career and now here at R-MA. Tom gets it. He knows the task and goes about it with an intensity and seriousness that tells most people that he means to win this day, this effort, this conversation - and he almost always does. I think to myself as I walk to my office that the boys love Tom. He’s tough on them, but they come to see that the gruffness is his way of showing his love and care for them. Tom cares ENOUGH to correct their uniforms or to prod them to hurry up when they’re still sleepy. He wants for each of them what he always has: a sense of purpose and direction...things that can help them lead lives of meaning and success!

COVID stretches on and on. It even seems to be getting worse in this “new” COVID year of 2021. The vaccine has been available for a few months when school begins again and we’re proud that we’ve stayed open and in-person for classes since returning in the fall of 2020. No one in our small community has had a “bad” case of the illness, and R-MA has been largely unscathed (if growing pretty tired of the masks and shots). But outside our campus community, there are now deaths and they are mounting. Eventually, I mandate that employees receive the vaccine unless they request a waiver for medical or faith reasons. A few of these requests are made and all are granted, but there are those who believe the vaccine is dangerous or morally wrong to accept and, to my sadness, some of those people choose to leave. Tom tells me he will soon be one of those - he loves working at R-MA, but believes I was wrong to make the vaccine mandatory, and I’m filled with the sadness of knowing my friend will leave us because of a decision I’ve made.

Within a day or so, he’s back. “I can’t stand it. I love it here and I’ll get the vaccine, so I can stay,” he says. I believe Tom got the vaccine that week, but on the following Saturday, his grandson came to visit him for the weekend and Tom contracted COVID-19. He would soon be hospitalized and battle the virus for about two weeks until October 5, 2021, when like too many others around the world, Tom Riley passed away.

Tom’s family asked us to fully support his funeral, and several of us went to a Winchester funeral home for his memorial service. His family fills the first several rows and there’s a lot of crying. I am grateful to see past employees of the Academy in the crowd, and then our Chaplain begins the service. Josh Orndorff speaks kindly of a man he knew and respected. Then he calls on the Cadet Corps Chaplain to read a scripture passage, followed by the Corps Commander. These are young men who slept safely under Tom’s guardianship and their words are powerful to me. I make brief remarks as well and then, with the rest of the R-MA Honor Guard provided for this event, the crowd moves outside to await the arrival of the coffin on the most amazing conveyance I’ve ever seen at a funeral: Tom has asked to be carried to his final resting place inside a glass hearse pulled by a motorcycle. No one who knows Tom is surprised at this selection, but there’s a shortage of men to carry the coffin to the hearse...it is not clear whether the pallbearers are absent or if there is a communication error, but several of us assemble informally and load the coffin into the hearse.

We drive in a solemn procession across town to the Mount Hebron Cemetery and the funeral party assembles beside the grave. It is clear that, again, there are not people assigned carry the coffin forward, so then-Commandant Lt Col Mike Starling, USMC (Ret) ‘88, several of the Honor Guard cadets, and I carry Tom to his grave. It is simultaneously one of the saddest and proudest moments I have ever experienced. Tom worked so hard. He defended our country and guarded our boys while they slept. He cajoled and counseled hundreds of them with his unique brand of humor and discipline. He stood in that window by the stairwell for thousands of mornings, giving so many of us one more indication that today would be a good day at R-MA.

In the ways he lived and loved and worked and died: Tom Riley lived a life of meaning and success. We miss you, Tom, and we remember what you taught us.