The Day I Met Duncan

Image by Toni Travels via Flickr

Andy Sweet and I headed over to the King building in Dunwoody because his brother Rob works there. We were walking in through the wrong door when we crossed the path of Duncan.

Duncan is an 81 year old, former US Marine. He saw Andy's Georgia Tech polo shirt and his face lit up! He pulled us aside and told us that the thing that came to mind when he thought about Georgia Tech was... wait for it...

Close Air Support

My mind was racing. What the hell was he talking about? He repeated it over and over again and was talking about "if you want bombs to come in and blow the hell out of that guy over there you damn sure don't want them landing in your hip pocket" and other interesting phrases.

His whole point, I think, was that way way back in the days of WWII or so that the first commander of the Air Force was a GT graduate. Furthermore, he asserted that this GT graduate (he didn't name him...) had pushed for advanced air weapons like helicopters, vertical take-off airplanes, precision munitions etc...

When he shook my hand he pulled me in towards him with surprising force. I thought we would never escape. We weren't really sure what we had gotten ourselves into.

Oh, and he thought very poorly of Harvard for some reason. Something to do with Ted Kennedy. He said Standford was the best college in the US (and admitted Harvard was the oldest - it's not) but GT was the one he liked the best. Because of Close Air Support.

On our way out he found us again and told us that the best place to get a degree in hospitality management was Penn State.

We've all met a Duncan at some point. Tell me about yours!