Classmate Update

Paul Carron sent me a note a week or two ago. He’s married to a Charlotte girl who keeps him in line, and they just had their first little one. Madeline Elisabeth Carron was born 16 January 2008 at Fort Benning, GA.

Also, to round out this update, here’s something on a 99er that I stumbled upon when I was looking around the USMA website:

Uptgraft named MacArthur Award winner

(reprinted from The Pointer View)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Department of the Army announced the winners of the Gen. Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award for calendar year 2007 Tuesday.

Captain James W. Uptgraft (Class of 1999), an instructor in the Department of Military Instruction at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, is one of the 28 company grade officers, including three other academy graduates who were named.

“I am extremely honored to be recognized as a MacArthur Leadership Award winner,” Uptgraft said Wednesday.

Other academy graduates were Capts. Christopher J. Demure (Class of ’00), James T. Golby (’01) and Edward E. Kennedy (’00).

The MacArthur award is given annually to Army officers — active, Guard and Reserve — who exhibit extraordinary leadership abilities and embody the ideals embraced by MacArthur. Criteria for the award include the ability to motivate others, understand fellow Soldiers and inspire commitment, teamwork and esprit de corps.

The award states that “these officers epitomize the ideals for which Gen. Douglas MacArthur stood: Duty, Honor and Country.”

The MacArthur Leadership Award program is jointly sponsored by the Army and the General Douglas MacArthur Foundation.

The awards will be given in Washington in May.

Classmate Update

And we’re finally caught up! I’m pleased to bring you the most recent classmate updates I have, the newest of which came in less than a week ago.

Gabe Smith, a fellow G2 Gator, sent me the following:

Two weeks after graduation Janet and I were married in Charlotte, NC. After all of the fun at Fort Benning we moved to DC where I did my platoon leader and XO time with the 3rd Infantry (Old Guard). I was at the Pentagon on September 11th. After the Captain’s Course at Benning we moved to Fort Lewis, WA and deployed to Iraq with 3rd Brigade, 2nd ID. Read the rest of this entry »

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Classmate Update

Still catching up..

Sean Kilbride sent me a note — he’s doing well, as is his family. If you recall, the Kilbride may have had a family majority at West Point while we were there. His older sister was a firstie in my company, class of ‘95 if I recall. Something tells me there was one before her and one or two after Sean.

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Classmate Update

More updates that have stacked up while I ignored the website:

Dan Czirjak and Becca Platt married relatively soon after graduation. Becca sent a nice update with a picture that I’ll post below. As an interesting historical footnote, Dan and I fought in plebe boxing for our first graded bout. It lasted all of 15 seconds before Dan landed a nice shot and knocked me right on my butt. It wasn’t one of my finer moments; and given my boxing skills, I’m fairly certain Dan doesn’t count it as one of his great accomplishments either. This update is probably about 10 months old, so keep that in mind. Becca writes:

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