By John Keller Editor-In-Chief
Once in a while it is appropriate for a magazine to deviate temporarily from its core subject matter. We, the staff of Military & Aerospace Electronics, believe it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this when tragedy strikes one of our own.
U.S. Army Special Forces Capt. Samuel Rhea, 31 and a veteran of some of the most intensive battles of the Persian Gulf War, died early Aug. 6 in the crash of a small private airplane. He had been attending the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
Capt. Rhea was in the midst of a bright military career. He had been with the U.S. 3rd Armored Division in 1991 as tanks from his unit helped smash resistance from the Republican Guards on the deserts of Western Iraq. Recently he began shifting his military emphasis to diplomacy, where he might have become as proficient at waging peace as he was at waging war.
His skills and accomplishments were the pride of his father, Military & Aerospace Electronics Senior Editor John Rhea, who manages our Washington bureau and provides some of our most insightful news, analyses, and feature stories.
In his grief, we at Military & Aerospace Electronics stand beside John Rhea. In these pages of our September issue, you will read John`s tribute to his only son. His words, this time, will not concern enabling technologies, commercial off-the-shelf equipment, electronic design trade-offs, or new trends in systems development. We make no apologies for that. John`s remembrances of his son are every bit as important.
To the memory of Capt. Samuel Rhea we affectionately dedicate this September 1997 issue of Military & Aerospace Electronics.
