This past week General Al Gray, easily the most beloved Commandant of the Marine Corps in living history, passed away at 95.
Most obituaries I’ve seen, the best of which is Dan Lamothe’s at the Washington Post, show General Gray in uniform when he served. But I chose the picture above because it reflects how I remember him. I didn’t come into the Marine Corps until years after he was retired, but I saw him speak multiple times. Two of those times he was wearing his famous MARPAT jacket. The picture also shows how much he enjoyed interacting with Marines long after he retired. Yes, he was loved by generations of Marines but that love was very mutual.
He loved to tell stories and it seems like everyone has their own General Gray story. John Schmitt, the author of FMFM-1 Warfighting, once told me that General Gray only gave him input in the form of stories and he would then have to extrapolate the lesson contained therein. My story is that I went to an event at Marine Corps University where he was speaking. It was a weekend so it was not very well attended but I lived in base housing at the time and I went in uniform. For some reason I was the only one who did. When he was done speaking, he received the usual standing ovation as he walked out. Before walking out though he crossed the room to me and with a big grandpa-esque smile on his face, punched me straight in the chest. Then he walked away. He didn’t say a word and he didn’t need to say a word. I understood.
I also don’t need to drone on about him. He wouldn’t like it. There’s plenty out there on him, including a great 60 Minutes interview. Needless to say he established the intellectual underpinning of what the Marine Corps is and will be in the future, even as platforms and doctrine change. Doctrine is the bridge between theory and practice, and the Marine Corps remains the only American service with a theory that grounds its role and its ethos in a philosophy. That’s thanks to General Gray.