Why Norwich University
Every so often, I get questions from the audience that surprise me. Two weeks ago, I was invited to speak at a local Rotary club to give what I call my “Grandpa, what did you do during the Vietnam War?” speech. Lead time on these events can be as short as a week or two or several months.
At this event, the surprising question was “Why is Josh Haman a graduate of Norwich University?” Hmmmm, never been asked that one before. Obviously, he’s read one of my books!
When creating characters, you have to make a lot of choices. I went to a writer’s clinic where they supposedly tell you everything you need to know to get published and become the second coming of Tom Clancy or John Grisham. One of the takeaways from the event was “make your characters different.”
Since all, at least since the Naval Aviation Cadet program ended, have to be college graduates, Josh Haman had to get a degree from someplace. The Naval Academy was too easy and was eliminated. Given the year he graduated, there were four commissioning sources for potential Naval Aviators – Naval Academy, ROTC, Aviation Officer Candidate School (AOCS) and Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate (AVROC).
In my mind, I went back and forth between AVROC and ROTC and finally settled on ROTC. Most everyone knows about ROTC and I wanted Josh to come out with a regular commission and didn’t want to have to explain the augmentation process from reserve to regular officer because it wouldn’t add any value to the story. That settled, Josh had to graduate from somewhere. Because Josh is a ski racer, many schools like VMI, University of Arizona, Texas A&M, UCLA, University of Florida, Vanderbilt, etc. were eliminated. It came down to an interesting group – Rennselaer Polytech, Norwich University, University of New Mexico and University of Colorado.
I picked Norwich for four reasons. It is a small, tough to get into school school nestled in the hills of Vermont and a twenty minute (longer in heavy snow) of some of the best skiing in the world. I liked its culture and, at the time Josh is there, it had its own small ski area. Norwich is a very small school – when Josh would have been there, the corps of cadets from all three services would have been about 600 students of a total university enrollment of about 1,200.
Two, Norwich has a very interesting history. It is the oldest private military college in the U.S. and was founded by a West Point graduate in 1819 to produce engineers for the Army. Since its founding, it moved from Norwich, VT to Middletown, CT back to Norwich and now it is in Northfield, VT. It went through struggles in the late 1800s but managed to persevere.
Three, it has produced an astonishingly long list of distinguished graduates for such a small school. To date, 102 generals, 12 generals, 9 generals, and 16 admirals are Norwich grads and more are coming.
Fourth, Norwich is also recognized by the DOD as the “birthplace of ROTC. I could go on and on, but those are some of the facts. And, it didn’t hurt that my son is a member of the Norwich class of 2000!
Marc Liebman
September 2017
