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http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/pedro-luis-rustan-65-aerospace-and-surveillance-innovator/2012/07/07/gJQAZrVeUW_story.html?hpid=z4
If you are of a mind, you can visit the link above. It is a small article in the Washington Post from 7 July 2012.
It tells you a little bit, a very little bit, about a dear friend and colleague of mine who died recently. Pedro Luis Rustan. Cancer finally got him just this last week, but believe me it never slowed him down ... until the final bell tolled.
I met Pete in the early 1990s, when he came to the NRO in Northern Virginia. He was a full Colonel then (USAF) and filled with energy, passion, enthusiasm -- and the hardest worker I have ever seen. Certainly shook things up in the Agencies; if you could ask around behind closed Agency doors you'd hear many different opinions of the man (some admiring, some dismissive, some even angry).
But if you ask the working men/women and the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines -- they'll all tell you that Pete worked tirelessly to help them, to preserve their lives, to give them what they needed to succeed. At considerable cost to himself.
I suppose you could say Pete was just another one of "those guys" you never hear about, but who actually get things done. Without "those guys" we would be in "Hurt City" (as my soldier friends often say). Pete got a lot of very difficult things done -- things that would never have happened without him and for which, believe me, we are all better off.
He certainly settled the immigrant question for me. Pete was a naturalized American who escaped Cuba when young to find his freedom here. He was a proud American and I was proud to know him.
That's about all I can say about what he did, about why you should care.
He was my friend. I miss him now and I know I'll miss him more tomorrow, and every tomorrow thereafter.
If you are of a mind, you can visit the link above. It is a small article in the Washington Post from 7 July 2012.
It tells you a little bit, a very little bit, about a dear friend and colleague of mine who died recently. Pedro Luis Rustan. Cancer finally got him just this last week, but believe me it never slowed him down ... until the final bell tolled.
I met Pete in the early 1990s, when he came to the NRO in Northern Virginia. He was a full Colonel then (USAF) and filled with energy, passion, enthusiasm -- and the hardest worker I have ever seen. Certainly shook things up in the Agencies; if you could ask around behind closed Agency doors you'd hear many different opinions of the man (some admiring, some dismissive, some even angry).
But if you ask the working men/women and the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines -- they'll all tell you that Pete worked tirelessly to help them, to preserve their lives, to give them what they needed to succeed. At considerable cost to himself.
I suppose you could say Pete was just another one of "those guys" you never hear about, but who actually get things done. Without "those guys" we would be in "Hurt City" (as my soldier friends often say). Pete got a lot of very difficult things done -- things that would never have happened without him and for which, believe me, we are all better off.
He certainly settled the immigrant question for me. Pete was a naturalized American who escaped Cuba when young to find his freedom here. He was a proud American and I was proud to know him.
That's about all I can say about what he did, about why you should care.
He was my friend. I miss him now and I know I'll miss him more tomorrow, and every tomorrow thereafter.
