Posted by Phil Gioia on October 4, 2003:

I flew to DC last week [Sept 26, 2003] for a funeral at Arlington. Colonel Bob Alsheimer, West Point '57, an Army officer for whom I have always had great respect, was laid to rest. On Friday, September 26th, the weather was perfect; a blue-sky, early-Autumn morning.Precisely at 0900, winding its way along the road between gravestones stretching far into the distance, the procession approached the canopied site where Bob's friends and family would pay their last respects. The flag-draped casket lay on a caisson drawn by a full horse team; a riderless horse with boots reversed in their stirrups was led by a sergeant; a full band played the slow march; the US and Army Colors were carried between two platoons of infantry with fixed bayonets; there was a firing party, and a bugler. All the troops, from the Third Infantry, the "Old Guard", were in dress blues. Bob Alsheimer was one of those officers whose orbits cross your own very rarely. A largely self-effacing man with a wicked sense of humor, tall and powerfully built, he was the model, when he arrived at VMI as a Tactical Officer in 1965, of what a Regular Army officer should and could be. According to his West Point classmates, he was All-American in soccer at West Point, when soccer was still considered a 'fringe' sport. His nickname as a cadet was "Spoony Bob"; as in "one who shines". He came to us at VMI as a Captain, after back-to-back assignments with the Old Guard at Fort Myer, and the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell. His cadets at VMI knew him as a hard-scorer in deportment and discipline, but very fair. He was a superb small-unit tactician, and a fine instructor. He was the advisor to the cadet Ranger unit, which conducted many exercises in the Shenandoah. Very little that I learned after graduating from VMI,in my first years as an Infantry officer, to include what was taught in Ranger School, was outside what I'd already learned from Bob Alsheimer's syllabus. In fact, the highest accolade I received as a lieutenant in the 82d Airborne Division was not from senior officers, although I managed to somehow collect a few of those. It was from a senior NCO who, as an umpire, had monitored my rifle platoon's participation in a complex night jump and tactical regroupment, followed by a movement to and the assault and seizure of a defended objective. This is tricky enough stuff in daylight, and devilish at night. After the debrief and critique, the very senior paratroop Sergeant asked, respectfully, "Lieutenant, are you a prior-service man?" When I said I wasn't, he said, "Well, sir, I could have sworn you were. You know your stuff, but without the bullshit, if you'll pardon my saying so." What I didn't tell him was that what I had learned, "without the bullshit", I had learned from Bob Alsheimer. Because of the example he set, Bob had a huge impact on my decision while a cadet at VMI to select Infantry as my career branch. He, like his fellow West Point classmate Bob Drudik, also Infantry, nicknamed "Ranger Bob",and destined to become a Major General himself, projected the strongest professional aura. They were direct proof that the Army thought strongly enough of VMI in the mid-1960's to send us two of their best. Bob Alsheimer was the Officer in Charge in Cadet Barracks, on the night in 1965 I learned my father had died in New York City. The cadet Corporal of the Guard woke me at about three in the morning with that news. I remember standing in the cold November air, in front of that little office in the side of Washington Arch in that enormous barracks, where the O.C. bunked while he was on duty. I felt quite alone, and very down, but I heard quiet words of encouragement and strength from Bob. He accelerated the emergency leave procedure, arranged for me to get to the airport in Roanoke, called the airline to get me on the first plane in the morning to National Airport and then on to La Guardia, stuck twenty dollars in my pocket,patted me on the shoulder, and said, "Tell your mother we're thinking of her, Mister Gioia. Come back to us when you can." THAT was leadership. It was Bob Alsheimer at his best. So I stood at Arlington last Friday, beside Andy Anderson, one of my Brother Rats from VMI, who had also come to pay his respects to Bob, and we watched the detail commander present the American flag, folded into its neat triangle, to Bob's wife, Nancy. She was surrounded by her family: three sons and a daughter, all grown, with their children. About ten of Bob's classmates from West Point were there, too. They were all tall; they had been cadets back when they still "sized" the Corps, and cadets were assigned to companies by height. It allowed for a neat trick of perspective: if you put the tallest men on the either end of the Corps,and the shorter ones in the center, when you looked down the 'Long Gray Line' on parade, everyone appeared to be precisely the same height. That was back, as his classmates told me a touch wistfully, "in the Old Corps..." After we had all placed a rose or a wildflower in memory of Bob and given him our last salute, the band struck up a lively air, and the Old Guard marched off. Everyone rendezvoused at the Army-Navy Country Club, also in Arlington, where we told amusing anecdotes and downright outrageous stories about Bob, and remembered him as he was when we were all younger, and the Army was a family that embraced us all. And for a couple of hours there at Arlington, on Friday of last week, the Army brought us all together again, and the years dropped away, and we remembered Bob Alsheimer. He is, in [the]photo of the Tactical Staff at VMI in 1967, [on class site at www.usma1957.org] characteristically standing in the top row, at center, head shoulders above the rest. R.I.P.

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