Harvard Law Hero
They keep coming out of the woodwork. Harvard war heroes. This one, when all the other Harvard Law graduates headed off to the white-shoe law firms, the non-profits, community organizing, that kind of thing, he headed off to the United States Marine Corps. Three combat tours later, it was the DEA because, his dad said, unlike CIA and other agencies, he could be assured of frontline action there. He found it in Afghanistan. Boston Herald:
It was, at first, a story about two Bay State sons – Marine Capts. Kyle Van de Giesen and Eric Jones – who perished on Oct. 26, when the helicopters they were piloting collided in southern Afghanistan.
But there was another tale of unsung valor that day, in a separate Afghan helicopter crash.
DEA Special Agent Michael E. Weston came out of Harvard Law in 1997, on a career track that took him into the world’s hottest war zones in the service of his country.
On Oct. 26, Special Agents Weston, 37, Forrest N. Leamon, 37 and Chad L. Michael, 30, were part of an elite DEA-Special Forces strike team, which had just completed a successful night raid on an Afghan drug bazaar.
After a fierce, hour-long firefight, 31 enemy insurgents and heroin traffickers were dead, and a stockpile of drugs, IEDs and weapons were seized. Mike Weston and his team boarded the choppers for the flight back to their outpost in the western city of Herat, certain they had made a difference in the blackness before the Afghan dawn.
“A lot of what we do is done quietly,” said Matthew Murphy, in Boston’s DEA office. “The public isn’t generally aware of the dedication of character it takes to place oneself on the front lines of narco-terrorism . . . these were not ordinary men.”
For Weston, a California native, those last intense moments must have seemed like one more adventure in an extraordinary life.
Cum laude at Harvard Law, when his classmates went to white-shoe law firms, he went to the Marines. Weston would rise to rank of major, serve three combat tours in Iraq, become a JAG prosecutor at Camp Pendleton, serve as DEA street agent in Richmond, Va., and, oh yes, kayak the Mississippi from Minneapolis to New Orleans, 2,300 miles in 29 days.
The rest here.
Despite looking officially askance at the military, Harvard continues to produce heroes. Leaders, who might someday show Harvard the way.
It’s not like they aren’t there. I’ve run into a few Marines and soldiers who’ve come and gone from Harvard recently, exhibiting leadership along the way. 2nd Lt. Joe Kristol, USMC, 2009 Harvard grad. Seth Moulton, USMC Iraq vet, advisor to Gen. Petraeus, Harvard 2001, Harvard Business School and JFK School of Government. Nate Fick of One Bullet Away fame, USMC Afghanistan and Iraq vet, Center for a New American Security CEO, Dartmouth and Harvard Business. Craig Mullaney of The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education fame, US Army Afghanistan vet, West Point and Harvard Business. I was in a churchful of Ivy League combat vets at Harvard just last week, listening to some Harvard muckimucks tell us what a great example Harvard heroes set. It’s true, they do.
Topics: Afghanistan, America, academia, courage
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 1:36 pm Comments (2) on Wednesday, November 18, 2009
2 Responses to “Harvard Law Hero”
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November 18th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
My guess is that those guys are heroes in spite of Harvard, not because of it, and that they would have become heroes if they had gone to Suffolk CC.
November 19th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
I’m just shocked, quite frankly, that even the few who do come from the “elite” ivy league schools still volunteer. I would have figured that the heavy dose of propaganzing those schools do, would turn all away from genuine public service (i.e. serving in the armed forces). I only went to state school in the deep south and would never been remotely considered by any of the ivy league school. But I too, served in the USMC, albeit 25+ years past.
thanks for giving publicity to those who could have had far more (monetarily) from life, yet chose to serve.
Rich Vail
Pikesville, MD