![]() A great commander does what he expects his soldiers to do. Bill worked with us, not above us, and we all wanted to please him. We learned to work quickly and work hard. Fentress and his army of big-bearded backhoe operators. In the early summer, sunflower plants would grow so tall that our tunnel-building operations were out of sight of our natural enemies: the neighborhood’s developer, Mr. Our Ho Chi Minh trail was in the as-yet-developed fields surrounding Sunhaven Drive. After watching Cronkite show clips of tunnel systems, we decided to build tunnels of our own. Indeed, playing war may have also been our way of dealing with the tensions and anxieties that confront all families facing war. He could throw the ball farther, insisting that we had to run faster to catch up to it.Īs military brats we were really good at playing war. He would tell us where to go, outline the blocking scheme, and decide who would go over the fence to get the ball next door and distract the scary dog on the other side. We numbered eight-10 for after school football games in the front or backyards of homes where young mothers were too busy with younger children to care much about the damage we did to lawns.īill was several inches taller than most of us, and played quarterback and coached most of the time. Navy Special Operations, and many have undoubtedly seen the YouTube video of his wildly popular 2014 UT commencement address, but I am here to tell you that Bill was an officer and a gentleman at 13, well before he showed up for SEAL training.īack then, Bill’s soldiers numbered anywhere from 10-25, depending on the time of day or day of the week. Most of you know of Bill’s expertise as the commander of U.S. In the fall, winter, spring, and summer of 1968-69, Bill McRaven, your new chancellor, was the master and commander of Sunhaven Drive. My dad was responsible for writing the medal commendations for Air Force personnel who distinguished themselves in action in Vietnam. Our parents were all involved in the war, directly or indirectly. We were all boys who aspired to reach manhood early, and we watched UT grad Walter Cronkite every evening and saw all of the film clips from Vietnam. Bill’s dad was a more established senior officer, and most of the rest of the kids were sons and daughters of captains and majors. The oldest of the retirees were World War II vets who bought houses near the golf course at the center of the subdivision. Windcrest had become a military retirement community on San Antonio’s northeast side. Most of the kids on the block were military brats whose parents worked at Randolph Air Force Base a few miles away. He was a couple of years older than most of us. The first kid I met on Sunhaven was Billy McRaven, who lived three houses north on our side of the street. My parents were among the first families to build a house on Sunhaven Drive in San Antonio’s Windcrest subdivision in 1968.
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