Francis Guy Riley

West Point, 1965

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Phil Olmsted on July 9, 2007:

I'll miss Guy. He wrote my Firsty picture caption in The Howitzer, for better or for worse. Although we never connected much after graduation, I remember Christmas Leave 1964, when Guy and I went to Reno (his hime town). We played blackjack all night and I netted about $50.00. Guy made me quit, reminding me that a couple of years before he had won and lost back around $2,500.00 in one night. That was an unbelievable sum at the time. I also (sort of) remember a trip we made to Las Vegas, where Guy's sister lived, during a weekend while attending ADA school at Ft. Bliss before our first post-graduation assignments. Guy, Slats Letterie, one other grad (sorry, but I don't remember the name - perhaps just as well) and I decided, after a few at the O-Club one Friday night, to go to Vegas. We drove in shifts all night, crashed at Guy's sister's apartment at about 11:00am Saturday, woke up around sundown, and hit Vegas hard (or maybe it hit us). We had a good time, nobody lost the gas money, and we made it back to El Paso in time to show up for Monday classes. We were on the same Red Tail to Korea, and on the same flight coming back. We promised to get together etc., but I never saw him again. Here's to the first (if not the only) 2 Century Club member of '65.

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