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General News: General Petraeus Remembers His Hometown
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| General David Petraeus |
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| General Petraeus' childhood home |
September 21, 2007
AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW FROM THE FRONTLINE IN BAGHDAD
PART 1 OF 4
Ten days ago, General David Petraeus was in the international spotlight at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services committee, detailing his assessment of U.S. military progress in Iraq.
On Friday, General Petraeus called his hometown website, www.Cornwall-on-Hudson.com and, in an exclusive conversation, he talked about how growing up in the village shaped who he is today.
Petraeus called from Camp Victory in Baghdad, where the evening temperature hovered in the mid-90s, dust storms threatened, and a helicopter landed outside his door. But for nearly an hour, Cornwall, West Point, and the Hudson Valley, seemed to absorb his thoughts.
“It was a wonderful place to grow up,” General Petraeus said on the phone, recalling the sense of community that he found in the village. “There is something very, very special about it and events like the 4th of July celebration and other events that bring out the spirit of a small town. I’m very privileged to have done that.”
When the general returns to Cornwall, which he last did around two years ago, he feels like he is frozen in time. “The truth is,” he said, “when I talk with people from that era, I’m still Peaches,” referring to his nickname as a child.
Dave Petraeus grew up in a house on Avenue A that his parents built in the early 1950s, just before he was born. His father, Sixtus. was Dutch, a merchant marine who sailed hostile waters in World War II and visited nearly every port in the world before settling with his Brooklyn-born wife, Marion, in Cornwall-on-Hudson.
When he describes his young life, Petraeus sounds like a doer –- always on the go. He doesn’t speak of his academic achievements as much as he does the many sports he loved – even though he was a National Merit Scholar in high school and graduated near the top of his class from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
“I played pit basketball, Little League baseball, and skiied,” he recalled, then continued, “We started the tennis team and I was on the soccer team.”
Almost as an afterthought, the general added that his soccer team won the championship his senior year. He credits this success, in part, to his coach, a retired Army colonel who volunteered his time.
He also credits the lessons of athletic competition that he learned from coaches like Glen McGuinnes and Walt Reeb for helping propel him to the top ranks of the U.S. military. “Working hard at that, the practice that it takes,” Petraeus said, “these are the values that we hold so dear (and) I think you reach back to those experience over the years.”
General Petraeus also believes his early experience as a newspaper delivery boy for the Times Herald-Record provided an important building block. For two-and-a-half years, around the ages of 11, 12 and 13, he rose each morning before dawn to go out on his paper route.
“It was a good experience,” the general said, “you know it takes some self-discipline to get out of bed at 5:30 in the morning when it’s 12 degrees outside and snowing.”
Decades later, in 2006, General Petraeus found himself returning to West Point for a ceremony, now one of the top officers sitting in the front row as the prestigious Thayer Award was presented to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw.
“I was sitting there, and I actually finally made it to the front row, you know, with the three-star generals, and sitting next to me is none other than Mayor Moulton (of Cornwall-on-Hudson),” he recalled. “But to him, I’m still the kid who delivered the Times Herald-Record for two and a half years or sold string beans out of a little red wagon. It was really funny because it just sort of takes you back.”
Asked about how he felt being in the spotlight at the recent Senate hearings in Washington, D.C. General Petraeus said that it was a bit of an out-of-body experience.
He said he had rehearsed his statement many times and the delivery came effortlessly. “All of a sudden you feel yourself being transported, looking down on all those cameras,’ he recalled, “and you think, what in the world? It’s a long way from Avenue A."
(This is the first of a four-part series on General Petraeus’s recollections of growing up in Cornwall-on-Hudson. In the next part, he talks about the influence of his parents and American history on his life.)
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
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