Boyd (65 page)

Richards found that a famous observation by Taiichi Ono, the Toyota vice president who created the Toyota system, held true:
companies performing reasonably well will not adopt the Toyota system, although they may showcase isolated elements of lean
production. Boyd put it more succinctly: “You can’t change big bureaucracies until they have a disaster.”

With Boyd’s encouragement, Richards wrote various articles applying Boyd’s theories to business. He developed a briefing on
the same topic and began delivering it to major corporations. He went to Denmark and lectured at the Copenhagen Business School,
where Professor Ole Stromgren teaches courses designed around Boyd’s
work. Finally, Richards set up two Web sites (
www.Belisarius.com
and
www.d-n-i.net
) to showcase Boyd’s ideas and how they
relate to business. (Belisarius, the Byzantine commander, was one of Boyd’s favorite generals and was an early practitioner
of maneuver conflict; he always fought outnumbered, never lost a battle, and understood the moral dimension of war.)

By now Boyd must have wished he had listened to the admonitions of the Acolytes to transform his briefings into a written
work. It is through a body of writing that a man such as Boyd is remembered. It is when academics pore over a man’s words
and then write learned papers that his ideas find permanency. And that may be why Boyd was so enthusiastic about the book
being researched by Grant Hammond.

In the beginning, Hammond saw the book as a biography. But that changed when Boyd issued his only caveat: no personal information
is to be included in the book. Boyd did not want to talk about Erie, about his family, or about the personal dimensions of
his marriage and his life. Hammond’s book
The Mind of War
was published in the spring of 2001. It is a study of Boyd’s ideas and is written for an academic audience or for an audience
interested in military affairs.

By 1994, Boyd was experiencing such discomfort in his legs and hips that he wondered if the cancer had metastasized to his
bones. He spent an hour or so every day rubbing his legs with Ben-Gay.

Mary Ellen gave him a black cat named Pudding Pie and Boyd spent hour after hour sitting in his favorite chair with the cat
in his lap. Even though Pudding Pie was grown and had belonged to someone else, the cat was extraordinarily attentive to Boyd.
Clearly it was “his.” He remained the indomitable John Boyd. He liked nothing better than calling Sprad out in Las Vegas,
Ron Catton up in Spokane, Everett “Razz” Raspberry down in Fort Walton, and the Acolytes in Washington. Catton flew in to
see Boyd and stayed several days, spending much of that time listening to the “full brief” of Boyd’s work, about fourteen
hours.

One of the few times Mary, Jeff, or Kathy saw Boyd display any emotion was when he saw
Legends of the Fall,
a movie about the relationship of a father to his three sons. Boyd wept with such grief that his shoulders shook and he cried
aloud. Kathy did not understand
how he could be so emotional about a family on-screen when he was so oblivious to his own family.

It seemed to Boyd’s friends that he was winning his battle with cancer. But when he drove up to Erie to attend the 1995 reunion
of his high school class from Strong Vincent, he was quiet and subdued. Before the reunion he found his way over to Lincoln
Avenue and slowly drove up and down the street, looking at the neighborhood where he grew up. His car crept along in front
of his old house. Then he went to the end of the street, looked out across the bay toward the Peninsula, then turned around
and came back. Time after time he passed back and forth, almost as if he knew he would never see the house again. A vital
part of Boyd’s visits to Erie had changed; Frank Pettinato was retired and living in Florida.

That night the class reunion was down at the Yacht Club, only a few yards from where he and Chet Reichert launched their canoe
as boys to go over to the Peninsula and work as lifeguards. Boyd wore the madras pants and orange coat, but he did not tell
of his exploits in a voice that could be heard across the room. He was quiet, often staring across the darkness of the bay
toward the Peninsula. Even when a few of his old friends chided him about never making general, he smiled and shrugged. When
Chet Reichert’s wife, Terry, said she heard that he had cancer but had defeated it, he looked away for a long moment. Then
he moved closer and whispered, “It has come back.”

Boyd did not know it, but by then he also had colon cancer.

The summer of 1995 was the last time Boyd ever visited Erie. And 1995 was the last time he updated “Patterns of Conflict.”
The pain in his legs was such that when he visited Mary Ellen in Washington, Ben-Gay and vitamin C and shark cartilage provided
no relief. He was in constant pain. During the visit, Boyd asked Mary Ellen to drive him to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,
which, in all his years in Washington, he had never seen. There at “The Wall” he found the name of a friend who died early
in the war and he wept.

The urologist whom Boyd had been seeing said he could do nothing more, that if Boyd wanted further treatment he should see
another doctor. Boyd went to an oncologist in Palm Beach who was famous for prolonging the life of cancer patients. But there
was nothing that could be done.

In 1995, as Boyd wrestled with what he now knew was a terminal illness, his firstborn son, Stephen, was diagnosed with melanoma.
Mary was devastated. All she could think of were those long-ago days at Eglin when she spent so much time on the beach with
her son. Stephen’s cancer was so virulent and so advanced that Boyd thought his son might die first. He wanted Stephen to
be comfortable and talked of buying him a big car, a Cadillac perhaps, that could more easily accommodate his wheelchair.

When Boyd talked of dying, it was always with much bravado. When he died he wanted a Viking funeral, his body tied atop an
old wooden boat and the boat towed into the middle of Lake Erie and set afire. He worried constantly about his books and his
records and the early versions of his briefings and what would happen to them when he died. At times he sat and looked at
his books and wept.

By late 1996 Boyd was spending most of his time in bed. He did not want to go to the hospital. He fell frequently and Jeff
occasionally took him to a hospital in Palm Beach for radiation treatments. As they drove north on I-95, Boyd stared at people
in nearby cars and said, “Look at all these people. They are well. They are healthy. And I’m dying.”

The skin of Boyd’s chest broke out in frightening lesions. Radiation caused uncontrollable diarrhea. He wore a catheter. Darkly,
Jeff took some delight in all this. The man who had dominated his life, the man who always had to be in control, now had no
control.

Once Kathy came into Boyd’s room and found him sitting in his chair, surrounded by his books and papers. Tears coursed down
the folds of his face.

“What is it, Dad?” she asked.

“I won’t get to see my friends anymore,” he said. Uttering his thoughts made him weep aloud. His lips trembled as he said,
“I won’t get to see Tom and Pierre and Ray and Chuck. I won’t get to see Mike and Jim. Not ever again.”

Kathy fought back her anger. Why didn’t her father say he would miss his family?

Almost as if he sensed what she was thinking, Boyd looked up and said, “I love you.”

“I know,” Kathy said. But she was even more angry. It was the first time her father had ever said that he loved her. And he
waited until he knew he was dying. Why had he not told her years ago?

Now when the Acolytes called, Boyd was often too weak to come to the phone. He grew weaker and weaker and then, in late February
1997, entered the hospital. His family knew the end was near.

Jeff sat by his father’s bed during those last days. By now Boyd was so heavily sedated that only rarely was he conscious.
Jeff was there the night his father suddenly began talking of Tom Christie and reliving the days when they had stolen a million
dollars’ worth of computer time. Boyd drifted back into sleep. A few minutes later he called out “Pierre” and laughed and
said, “Tiger, we hosed those bastards good.” Again he drifted off. Then he called out “Chuck” and laughed about calling Spinney
in one night at midnight. “Because I’m a goddamn colonel and I say so,” he murmured. He called out for Leopold and Burton
and Wyly. And Jeff realized his father was replaying his life, remembering one last time the comrades with whom he had fought
the good fight. Jeff listened and waited for the name of someone in the family. But his brother Gerry was the only name Boyd
mentioned. Gerry was not there; he refused to visit because he was angry that Boyd had rejected his advice about having surgery.

Mary called Tom Christie and told him the end was near. Christie sent out e-mails to Boyd’s friends. Sprey called Spinney
and said, “We have to do something about John’s books and papers.”

“I know. I think they should go to one of the service schools.”

“The Marines?”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

Early the next morning Spinney sent an e-mail to Marine Corps Colonel G. I. Wilson, who forwarded it to Commandant Charles
Krulak. Before noon, Krulak answered, “Let’s do it.”

By the next day, the top generals in the Marine Corps were planning not only how to handle a special collection of all Boyd’s
papers, but also a John Boyd exhibit at the Marine Corps Research Center at Quantico.

The Acolytes called daily to check on Boyd. He could not talk. Mary told Spinney not to visit, so Spinney sat down and wrote
Boyd a long letter. It was difficult because, unlike Christie or Leopold or Burton, he had a warm and loving childhood. He
and his father were close, and he found it hard to articulate his feelings for Boyd without being disrespectful of his own
father. But he wrote the letter.

Then Jim Burton called at a time when Boyd was strong enough to talk. Burton said, “You are the father I never had. You made
my life
richer than it ever could have been without you.” Burton is not a demonstrative man. But that night he said, “John, I love
you.” And he and Boyd wept as they said good-bye to each other.

Boyd wanted his friends to remember him as the man who burned down hangars in Japan, the bigger-than-life Forty-Second Boyd,
the Mad Major, the Ghetto Colonel who presided over happy hour in the Old Guard Room, “Genghis John” who hosed a dozen generals
and whose cape jobs and hot platters and tube steaks were the stuff of legend. He did not want them to see a withered old
man with a catheter running into a container under his bed.

Two men ignored him and came to Good Samaritan Medical Center in Palm Beach. Ray Leopold came and sat on the bed and showed
Boyd his new cellular telephone, one of the first of its kind in the country. It was one of Boyd’s last good days. He and
Leopold had a raucous evening.

Pierre Sprey flew in and sat on a chair in the corner of the room and talked quietly with the man he had known more than thirty
years. There was much unsaid that night. But each heard what was in the heart of the other. These two men were brothers, the
original Fighter Mafia who had been victorious in a hundred bureaucratic battles.

By now letters were arriving from all over the world, dozens of letters. Letters from Boyd’s close friends, letters from those
who knew Boyd professionally, letters from pilots and from soldiers and—most of all—from Marines. Many who wrote had never
met Boyd. But they conveyed their respect and their great affection and said their lives had been changed by his work and
by his example. Boyd never saw the letters. He was too sick.

On March 8, the day after Sprey visited, Mary called Mary Ellen in Virginia and said, “You better come down. I don’t think
your father is going to make it.” Mary Ellen picked up Stephen and drove straight through to south Florida. Stephen was exhausted
so she dropped him off at her mother’s apartment and rushed to the hospital.

Boyd knew that Mary Ellen was on the way, but about 3:00
P
.
M
. that day he told a nurse, “I’m not sure I can make it until she arrives.” He slipped into a coma, and those were his last
words.

When Mary Ellen arrived at the Good Samaritan Medical Center, a nurse smiled and said, “You must be the daughter he has been
waiting to see. Where is the family?”

“What do you mean?” “He’s going. You need to get them here immediately.”

Mary Ellen called home. But Mary, Kathy, Jeff, and Stephen could not get organized for the fifteen-minute drive to the hospital.
Mary Ellen sat on the bed and clasped her father’s withered hands and told him how much she loved him. By then Boyd could
not speak, but his hand clasped hers. His Snookums was with him. Mary Ellen sensed how very tired her father was. She leaned
over and whispered that she knew he had been waging a mighty battle to hold on until she arrived. “You know, Dad, it’s okay.
If you want to go ahead, go. It’s okay.” With tears coursing down her cheeks she told him that he should find the rest and
peace he so desperately needed. “It’s okay, Dad.”

A moment later, at about 5:00
P
.
M
., Boyd smiled. His face relaxed and the grasp of his hand loosened. Mary Ellen felt her father’s soul pass through her and
he was gone.

El Cid Rides On

J
OHN
Richard Boyd—as is often the case with men of great accomplishment—gave his work far greater priority than he did his family.
The part of his legacy that concerns his family is embarrassing and shameful.

Today Mary and Kathy and Jeff continue to live in the two-bedroom apartment in Delray Beach. Except for workmen, no one who
is not a member of the family ever enters. One reason is that Mary says the apartment is jammed and cluttered and she is too
embarrassed for others to see it. Another reason is Jeff’s collection of snakes and tarantulas and insects. He says that today
he has only a seven-foot bull snake and a “few others,” but as he says this, he ducks his head and looks around as if fearful
someone might overhear him. Mary worries that word of Jeff’s collection might get out and she wonders how the apartment management
might react. Her friends have repeatedly asked her to kick Jeff out, but she can’t bring herself to do that. She receives
about one thousand six hundred dollars monthly from social security and a pension, and she drifts along, wondering what will
happen to Kathy and Jeff after she is gone.