Andrew Goodpaster

Andrew Jackson Goodpaster (February 12, 1915 – May 16, 2005) was the quintessential "soldier-statesman" who served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander and the Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He entered the Class of 1939 at West Point and, during World War II, led a battalion over a minefield and under hostile fire, actions for which he received the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest military award for valor after the Medal of Honor. Goodpaster entered Princeton University, where he earned master's degrees in engineering and international relations. He became a special assistant to the chief of staff of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe from 1950 to 1954 and was a favorite of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. He assisted Eisenhower in forming political and military guidelines for the new treaty organization and was Eisenhower's liaison among diplomats such as W. Averell Harriman, Jean Monnet of France and Hugh Gaitskell of the United Kingdom. Later, President Eisenhower asked General Goodpaster to serve as staff secretary in the White House. He became known as the president's alter ego for his ability to carry out orders in his wide-ranging national security portfolio. He played the essential backstage role in practically all U.S. military matters. General Goodpaster advanced through a series of sensitive positions in the 1960s on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. President Lyndon Johnson used him as an intermediary with Eisenhower for military suggestions in the escalating Vietnam War. From 1969 to 1974, he was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. He returned to active service three years later to become the 51st commandant of West Point. The school had been pummeled by a cheating scandal in which 152 cadets were dismissed, and it also had admitted its first class of women to some controversy. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for "his contributions in the field of international affairs." The next year, General Andrew Goodpaster participated in the 1985 Achievement Summit in Denver, Colorado and addressed the student delegates on his lifetime of service in the military.