The Death of a Friend

A friend of mine passed away recently, a friend who happened to be a billionaire, though I never thought of him as such. I only knew him as a fellow Marine. His name was Fred Smith. Our friendship began sometime around 2005, shortly after I read an article he had written in which he discussed how his company was built based on lessons he learned in the Marine Corps.

“When people ask what principles have guided me since I started the FedEx Corporation 35 years ago, my answer often startles them: It's the leadership tenets that I learned in the U.S. Marine Corps during my service in Vietnam.”

I wrote to Fred, introducing myself and sharing an article I had written years earlier, applying the 14 Marine Corps leadership traits to the role of parenting. Over the years, we corresponded by email. He ended one of his letters with the words, “Trust you are well. As you well know, every extra day is a gift.”

In 2018, I embarked on a nationwide journey interviewing Marines I had served with for a book project. One leg of the trip involved driving home to the Ozarks from Alabama. I contacted Fred, informing him that I would be driving through Memphis (the headquarters of FedEx). He invited me to stop in for a visit.

Meeting Fred was comparable to my interactions with the other Marines I met throughout my journey. After sitting down in his office, the first thing he did was share photos of some of the men he led in the 3^rd Battalion, 5^th Marines, some of whom had been killed in action.

Fred told me about his friendship with Vincent Capodanno, a Navy chaplain known affectionately as the “Grunt Padre,” who was killed on September 4, 1967, during Operation Swift. That afternoon, the unarmed chaplain was wounded in the hand, arms, and legs while giving last rites to dying Marines. He refused medical evacuation. That night, helping a Navy corpsman who was seriously wounded, Capodanno, along with two corpsmen and 14 Marines, was killed by an enemy machine gun. He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously.

I told Fred about the book project. When I mentioned my idea of ending the book with a trip back to Vietnam with some of the men I served with, he said he wanted to provide financial support. Thanks to Fred’s generosity, seven of us traveled to Vietnam in 2019 with a documentary film crew, donating a water purification system to a school that was built with funds raised by Marine officers years earlier. FedEx, by the way, built six schools in Vietnam.

Fred graduated from Yale in 1966 and then volunteered for the Marines. He deployed to Vietnam twice. During his second tour, he served as a Forward Air Controller flying in an OV-10 Bronco. He honorably left the Corps in 1969 as a captain, having been awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts.

REST IN PEACE, MY FRIEND