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William Eldridge “Bill” Odom grew up in Crossville, TN, with two
brothers and two sisters mentored by devoted parents. He attended Cumberland
County High School, lettered in football and baseball, edited the paper, earned
his Eagle Scout Badge and graduated as class salutatorian. He then spent a year
at the Columbia Military Academy.
Senator Albert Gore, Sr., appointed him to the Class of ’54. At
West Point he lettered in soccer, played B squad football and was a cow corporal
and a firstie lieutenant. Bill made a lot of friends. Early on we began to
perceive signs of a promising career. He demonstrated natural leadership
qualities, but one could sense his mind exploring and his interests expanding.
After Infantry Basic, Ranger and Jump Schools at Ft. Benning,
Bill led platoons in Munich, first with the 370th Armored Infantry Battalion and
then with the 76th Tank Battalion. His Tank Platoon received the highest
training test score in U.S. Army Europe. He branch transferred to Armor and
attended the Advanced Course at Ft. Knox in 1959–60. He then was selected to
attend the Russian course at the Monterey Language School, continuing at Columbia University and the Army’s Russian
Institute in Oberammergau, Germany. He earned his Ph.D. at Columbia in
Comparative Politics while teaching in the Social Science Department at West
Point.
While studying at Columbia, he courted Anne Curtis, and they
married in 1962. Anne had graduated from Middlebury College in 1958 and was studying for a master’s degree in American history
at Columbia. Mark Weld Odom, born in 1964, is now mid-career serving as an
Infantry colonel. He and his wife Beth enriched Bill’s recent years with Kate—a
lovely granddaughter. In addition to her duties as army wife and mother, Anne
managed a distinguished career as chief curator for the remarkable Hillwood
Museum and its Russian treasures in Washington, DC. Anne continues to serve as
curator emeritus.
After the Command and General Staff College and a tour in Viet
Nam, Bill served as assistant army attaché in Moscow with such distinction that
he was inducted into the Attaché Hall of Fame. Despite cold war perils, Bill
spirited the dissident Solzhenitsyn’s archives out of the USSR. Solzhenitsyn
describes this risky episode in his book, Invisible Allies.
During a second tour in the Social Sciences Department, Bill was
tapped by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security advisor, to
be his military assistant. Bill came to Brzezinski’s attention by providing a
critical analysis of the situation in Viet Nam after returning from his tour in
1973. This association fostered four years of intensive military policy
formation. When it ended, Brzezinski stated that Bill had few peers in the
annals of the military establishment.
Bill’s White House service was retained by the Reagan
Administration until he was selected by GEN Meyer to become Assistant (later
Deputy) Chief of Staff for Intelligence and promoted to major general and
lieutenant general. His service was so outstanding that the Reagan
Administration appointed him Director of the National Security Agency in 1985.
Bill retired in 1988 and launched a distinguished civilian
career. He became a Senior Fellow and Director of National Security Studies at
the Hudson Institute. Awarded an honorary degree by Middlebury College in 1987,
he then served ten years as a trustee. Middlebury President Liebowitz said, “I
can think of few trustees who have had such a great impact on our college
direction.” Invited to be a visiting professor at Yale, he taught Soviet/Russian
politics and National Security Studies for 19 years and taught briefly at
Georgetown University as well. He was awarded the Lex Hixon Prize for Teaching
Excellence at Yale—the students’ vote for “best teacher”—a real faculty prize.
Bill devoted a major part of his life to education at West Point,
Middlebury, and Yale, always interested in developing future leaders and
teaching them how to think. While at NSA, he paid particular attention to the
continued development of his mathematicians, and in 1995 he chaired a major
National Science Foundation mathematics study on how to provide the country with
the next generation of mathematicians.
In April 2006, Bill gave a speech on national security affairs to
the Fellows of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. Staff members
say the speech was so powerful that Bill received a unanimous standing ovation.
No one could recall the fellows giving one to any other speaker. A year later,
the Society elected him a fellow.
Bill held several private sector directorships, but his major
business commitment for seven years was as Chairman of the Board of the American
Science and Engineering Company based in Billerica, MA.
Classmates who served with him in the 370th Armored Infantry and
the 76th Tank Battalions were convinced that Bill was a natural as a troop
leader and motivator. His career could have reached the heights had he stayed in
line assignments. Those of us who knew him well, however, could feel that his
brain capacity was growing restless and it early directed the path of his
career. At each progressive stage he earned the respect and admiration of his
peers. While the power of his brain made him an “intellectual,” the power of his practical purpose made him
one of the most effective and honest commentators on contemporary
military-political affairs. He told the truth as he saw it, even when the
powerful did not want to hear it. Of his seven books, he considered The Collapse
of the Soviet Military, which included an analysis of the disintegration of the
USSR, as his most important work. In his many articles and numerous appearances
on radio and TV and his speeches and seminars, he constantly reviewed foreign
policy decisions and their implications for the U.S. and its allies. Most
recently he fought what he believed to be the destruction of our army in a cause that is not in the national interest.
A common lament of his many memorials is that he left us when we
needed him the most.
Farewell to a good friend.
— His family and classmates
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