Posted by Bill Bahr, USMA '69 on April 2, 2007:

Mel Tinker and his lovely wife were part of one of my trips to paradise. A number of us recent USMA graduates had shown up propitiously late for signing up for the available Bachelor Officers Quarters at Ft. Gordon, Georgia's Signal Officer Basic Course. Our punishment was that we had to find alternative living accommodations off post. Painful as it was, four of us found shelter by renting an apartment in a complex adjacent to a nursing school, where we spent our afternoons suffering poolside in the sun under the care of Georgia's finest would-be nurses. While we knew that Mel was also living in one of the apartments, we didn't see much of him. We figured he was likely either studying hard and/or enjoying married life. However, as the four of us were saving big money by sharing the apartment and getting per-diem pay to boot, we felt compelled to assuage our monetary and classmate-neglecting guilt by pre-discovering the Atkins Diet and eating steak at least twice a day. Yet good times eventually had to end. As the day of reckoning came, we either had to clean-up our apartment or pay a fee. That's when we remembered Mel had a vacuum cleaner, and we immediately put a stop to our shameful neglect of a very generous and accommodating classmate! Although I didn't see Mel after that, I understand he was also first stationed in Germany, as was I. USMA and SOBC classmate, may he rest in peace....

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