Building off Einstein’s “As the circle of light increases, so does the circumference of darkness around it.” And so it is with my closest friend, Thomas Brock “Tommy/Tom” Maertens Jr., after his passing on June 1, 2022. The enormity of his light was infinite, and thus so seems the grief. In a world devoid of heroes, where exceptional men are sprinkled sparsely throughout our lives, Tommy stood alone, the force of his personality sufficient to extinguish the darkness for so many around him. Like their sun, his family and friends rotated around him easily, lulled by his steady gravitational pull and warmth. I remember a classmate once saying that he could always tell whenever Tom entered a room, even when facing the other way, just from the shift in energy.
From early in his life, Tommy had intense focus and knew he wanted to go to West Point; he loved the place and never wavered in his devotion to USMA—or to his family. Born at Fort Benning, GA, the first son of Thomas Sr. and Brooks Miller Maertens, followed by siblings Buddy and Alice, Tommy graduated from Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield, VA and received an appointment to West Point, continuing the Long Gray Line tradition started by his father and uncle. While everyone in the Class of 1970 didn’t know Tommy personally, they all certainly remember him as the smiling drummer of his cadet band, the Happy Daze, which played at every hop until graduation—and many reunions since.
During the summer of 1969, Tommy first saw the stunning redhead who lived in the quarters next to his at Fort Jackson, SC on the night of the lunar landing, and “one small step” for this man would become the most eventful in his life. He and Karen Lee Kellar married at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah in June 1971 and continued to cherish 51 more years of the “ride of their lives.”
Tom spent the next few years out of West Point as a junior Field Artillery officer, his first assignment with the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, NC. Still, he couldn’t resist the lure of flying and attended rotary wing flight training and, like the rest of his class, had orders for Vietnam. With a Cobra transition en route, he arrived in Vietnam in January 1973, where he flew with F Troop, 9th Air Cavalry Brigade and later flew Hueys with the Four Power Joint Military Commission.
Assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, KY after Vietnam, Tom worked as a battalion maintenance officer for two years before branch transferring to the Transportation Corps at Fort Eustis, VA in 1975, the best way to garner aviation assignments at the time since the Aviation branch wouldn’t be organized until 1983.
Completing a fixed wing transition on the way to a unique R&D assignment, Tom worked as a test pilot and project officer for the Aviation Development Test Activity at Fort Rucker, AL before attending the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, earning a master’s degree in geography, followed by a teaching assignment to West Point. In 1983, he returned to Fort Eustis, where he was honored as the post representative for the Hampton Roads “Citizen of the Year” competition, in recognition for his service as a volunteer firefighter and EMT in the county fire department, a passion he would continue for decades.
Then assigned to Mannheim, Germany with the 70th Transportation Battalion (Aviation Intermediate Maintenance), Tom served as airfield operations officer for Coleman AAF, the busiest Army airfield in Germany, before being reassigned to Heidelberg to command the 207th Aviation Company. Flying both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, the 207th transported passengers as well as cargo throughout Europe. Tom was awarded the wings of a Master Army Aviator in 1987, but this paled in comparison to welcoming daughter McKenna Elise to the Maertens family the year before.
After returning stateside, Tom earned a Ph.D. in geography at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville before a final assignment at West Point as a professor, closing out his distinguished Army career in 1992 as a lieutenant colonel. Always gregarious and personable, Tom then spent many years working with alumni affairs, not only at West Point but also at Clemson and the College of Charleston, while also continuing to volunteer with various fire departments wherever he lived.
Throughout his life Tommy’s rare penchant for tackling new pursuits and challenges with endless optimism made everyone who knew him believe he could overcome any difficulty, vanquish any foe. And, after being diagnosed with cancer in 2015, he did just that for years. Truthfully, I have never seen anyone who fought as hard, who suffered more, but never complained. Over three years ago, when McKenna and Jen had their little boy, Wyatt, Tommy’s most cherished goal had been realized—becoming a grandfather. “I just hope I live long enough to see him grow up,” he told me one day; this was the first time I ever heard him express any doubt.
A modern Renaissance man, Tom Maertens could easily make any lesser man jealous—and we were all lesser men, or so it now seems. But that was never in his character. His dedication to his family and friends, to his volunteer work that touched many lives, and to the Army and West Point is better expressed in his own words. At the end of a list of “Career Highlights” he jotted down years ago, he simply wrote that he “would have served longer, if asked.”
Indeed, Tommy…a lifetime of service before self—and one hell of a ride!
— Paul Fardink, classmate