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<p>Memorial article found at 1974 Mar 1974 ASSEM</p>
<p><a href="https://usmalibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/assembly/id/15796/rec/1">https://usmalibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/assembly/id/15796/rec/1</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Transcribed from <em>Assembly</em>, March 1974, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 119–20.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><strong> </strong></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center; line-height: 115%;"><strong>ANDREW MICHAEL SIMKO</strong></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center; line-height: 115%;"><strong>No. 19101 <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Class of 1953</strong></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center; line-height: 115%;"><strong>Died April 5, 1970, in Vietnam, aged 39 years.</strong></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center; line-height: 115%;"><strong>Interment: West Point Cemetery</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When Andy Simnko died in Vietnam, his friends and his classmates lost one of the finest comrades any of us could possibly have; the Army lost one of its most brilliant and promising officers; the Nation lost a great American; and his family lost a magnificent human being whose love, compassion, and strength inspires them even today.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Born on 7 August 1930 in Lansing, Ohio, Andy was raised in Bellaire, Ohio. Even before entering the Military Academy, Andy had shown many of the outstanding traits that were to make him one of West Point's most respected graduates. During high school, he was not only a star athlete who lettered in three sports, he also held the highest average in his graduating class. In fact, Andy had no grade less than 90 during his entire four years in high school. It was during these years that Andy met Susie, the one and only girl of his entire life. She lived only one block from him during their high school days, and they were married at West Point the day after graduation in June 1953. For sixteen years their mutual love, respect, and admiration set them apart wherever they were stationed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Following his high school graduation in June of 1948, Andy was offered an appointment to West Point and won an academic scholarship to West Nottingham Academy, a college preparatory school in Maryland. At prep school he continued to stand out, being elected captain of the football team, again lettering in three sports, and setting the highest scholastic average of any student ever to attend West Nottingham Academy. It is little wonder that Andy was considered to be one of the most highly qualified candidates to ever enter West Point and, predictably, his cadet days were busy, productive, and happy.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Few men in the Class of 1953 contributed more to West Point-or to his classmates. He was a member of the Cadet Choir, managed the basketball team, became one of the Debate Council's best debaters, was the fiction and later an associate editor of <em>The Pointer </em>and, as a natural "First Section Hive," still found time to spend countless hours coaching the "goats" of all classes. Although a talented stalwart of the Plebe football team, he was just not large enough to compete on the Army football powerhouses of the early 1950s. Unfortunately for the "flankers," Andy then decided to coach company "intermurder" football, and during his First Class year achieved the ultimate success by coaching (and playing) the runts of Company A-2 to the brigade football championship over the flankers of Company A-1.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At graduation Andy selected the Infantry. Following the Basic Officer and Ranger Courses at Benning, Andy's first assignment was a heavy mortar company in Austria. As an indicator of his extraordinary talents, one of Andy's proudest moments during those early years came when he was selected the third place winner (out of more than six thousand nationwide entries) for the annual Freedoms Foundation Letter Competition. Typically, Andy's paper was titled, "My Vote—Freedom's Privilege."</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After three major moves in three years (Austria, Germany, Italy), Andy's selection to be one of the first Army students to attend the nuclear physics graduate school at the University of Virginia came as a welcome surprise to both him and Susie. From Virginia, Andy went to the Infantry Officer Advanced Course and thence as an instructor with the Field Command, Defense Atomic Support Agency at Sandia Base, New Mexico. During this tour, Andy completed work for a Master of Science degree in Physics.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">While at the Command and General Staff College in 1963–64, Andy was one of the first to volunteer for Vietnam, which was then just becoming daily news. Following language school, he served for a year as the Senior Advisor to Kien Hoa Sector in the IV Corps (Delta) Region. His performance in that critical assignment was so outstanding that he was one of the first men in his class to ever be awarded the Legion of Merit, and he established a reputation as an authority on pacification to such an extent that in subsequent assignments he was frequently selected for various Department of Defense study groups charged with analyzing the political and military strategy for fighting in Vietnam.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Following his first tour in Vietnam, Andy spent almost four years in Washington as the Project Manager of a highly sensitive (and classified) program with the Defense Atomic Support Agency. These were professionally rewarding years for Andy, but he longed to be back in the field with soldiers. It was an assignment of mixed blessings, for he was able to see and help his three lovely daughters grow. But after almost four years his keen sense of duty made him volunteer to return to Vietnam for a second tour. He told us the night before he departed: "All I want to do is command an Infantry battalion because that's made up of people, and as far as I'm concerned, people is what this Army is all about—in spite of the fact that I'm practically a charter member of the Atomic Energy Commission."</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So Andy returned to Vietnam and eventually got his battalion, a very famous battalion at that, the 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division. And one day one of his companies got into a heavy contact, and Andy tried to get to the company to help them out. Andy's helicopter crashed just as it was coming into the landing zone, killing him instantly. He was buried at West Point the following week.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Andy's strengths? He was personally and professionally one of the most honest men I have ever known. He had the world's greatest sense of humor and while he took his job seriously, he took great delight in laughing at himself. He had a brilliant intellect and coupled to that he had another even rarer trait, uncommon common sense. He loved his country, and he loved and adored his wonderful family. Andy's weaknesses? He had none.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Andy is survived by Susie, one of the most gracious ladies any of us have ever been privileged to know; by three wonderful daughters, Debra, Andrea, and Stephanie, by two brothers, three sisters, and his mother.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Knowing Andy was a once-in-a-lifetime privilege and all of us are better people for having felt Andy's influence. He was a magnificent soldier and a great friend; the Long Gray Line has been joined by one of West Point's most distinguished officers.</p>
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