Posted by Pete Grimm on November 11, 2024:

Thursday I will return to West Point for the memorial of my friend and company-classmate Peter Miles. Pete always represented the best of us, duty well performed and honor untarned. Pete left us back in July after a rough 7 month fight with stage 4 lung cancer. The world is a much poorer place without him. I can conjure Pete's ready smile, joking laugh and broad Massachusetts accent in a heartbeat. Christine and the rest of his family must miss him terribly. I am lucky to have had Pete as a friend, company mate, safari companion, and sailing buddy. If I ever found myself in a foxhole with bullets flying, I would have wanted Pete beside me. One night together on a sailboat off Cape Canaveral with the wind blowing against the Gulf Stream was not unlike that imagined foxhole. My grad-father often admonished me saying, "Everything you do is a reflection on me." Pete and Christine's children reflect wonderfully on the couple who raised them. When your children want to be just like you, you have done much right. Pete's children followed him into the service of our country. How could a man have lived better? Unlike Christine and his family, I had no expectation to wake up each day with Pete by my side. He is still alive in my mind and heart and will be forever. Someday, in the not so distant future, as the rest of us move into the shadows of that ghostly assemblage, I will count myself lucky to grip hands with Pete again.

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