RIP: Tom Clancy

I come not to praise Tom Clancy, but to bury...  Oh wait, that's a different story.  

I wasn't a great fan of the literature of Tom Clancy; I'm more of a Sci-Fi/fantasy guy than a military/espionage aficionado, but I have read a few of his novels on loooong airplane flights.  If you want to review some of his career, I urge you to read Stephen Green's obituary.

Would you buy insurance from this man?

Tom Clancy was  a local boy.  Born in Baltimore, he wound up selling insurance in Prince Frederick.  His first wife, Wanda, was a nurse at the local hospital; I know people bought insurance from Tom and some who took "pre-baby" classes from Wanda. In his spare time, he wrote a novel about the submarines, which he hoped to sell among naval officers.  It was called "The Hunt for Red October."  You may have heard of it. He sold it to the "Naval Institute Press" for $5000 and it was published in 1984.

It was recommended by President Ronald Reagan, and his career as a writer was made.

He became wealthy from books and movies made from books, and became the best known figure from Calvert County since Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (and look how well that worked out).

He was widely hated known for his conservative political views. 

A longtime holder of conservative and Republican views, Clancy's books bear dedications to American conservative political figures, most notably Ronald Reagan. A week after the September 11, 2001 attacks, on The O'Reilly Factor, Clancy claimed that left-wing politicians in the United States were partly responsible for September 11 due to their "gutting" of the Central Intelligence Agency.

He bought an estate with a bay front house in Northern Calvert County and it was widely rumored that he had a number of trees removed to "improve his view", and had been fined for having removed them from the critical area.  If this areal photo is accurate, it doesn't seem to have had much effect here 20 or so years later.  It was also reported he had a surplus military tank placed in his front yard.  If so, Google has not yet caught up with these sins.  The final fight scene in "Patriot Games" is thought to have been inspired by this house.

He divorced his first wife, Wanda, in 1996. Scandal um Magnum!  He married free lance journalist Alexandra Marie Llewellyn in 1999.

I had a brief encounter with Tom back in the early 90s (I think).  I was working for the Academy of Natural Sciences (of Philadelphia), at the then Estuarine Research Center (of whose twists and turns I could write many posts).  As usual for a private institution, we were looking for local (and not local if necessary) rich people to donate to the center to build an endowment.  At some point, someone suggested Tom Clancy, and a weekend visit was arranged to wine and dine, and hopefully persuade him.  Since most of the staff of the environmental centers are, and still remain devout environmentalists and liberals, they mostly had great disdain for Clancy's politics, but a great hope that somehow he would deign to drop some money on them.  The event went off as scheduled, and the lack of fit seemed obvious to all.  He may have ultimately donated a small amount to the center, but did not prove to be the savior.