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Colonel Larry Ritchie Williams, United States Marine Corps, was born in his grandparent’s home in Cabarrus County, North Carolina August 31, 1935. He was president of his senior class at Concord High School and is an Eagle Scout. With an NROTC scholarship he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Upon graduation June 3, 1957 he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps and married Betty Lou Whitt of Lexington, North Carolina two days later. During twenty-seven years in the Marine Corps he commanded ten Marine Corps units and organizations including an artillery platoon at Camp Lejeune, N.C., two artillery batteries: one on Okinawa and in the Philippines, another in Vietnam and later an artillery battalion on Okinawa and in South Korea. He was the OIC of the Marine Detachment at the Naval Station, Mayport, Florida. He served on the faculty of the Army Artillery and Missile School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He commanded Company A of the Marine Security Guard Battalion in Frankfurt, Germany. He subsequently commanded H&S Company and later H&S Battalion, Camp Butler, Okinawa, the Marine Barracks at the Naval Air Station, Alameda, California and 26th Marine Amphibious Unit and 4th Marine Amphibious Brigade Forward in arctic exercises in North Norway. He served at Headquarters, Marine Corps in Washington, D.C. implementing a cost-benefit programming system the first of the military services to do so. He was Chief of the Firepower Division at the Marine Corps Development Center, Quantico, Virginia and later Director, LAV Directorate introducing the Light Armored Vehicle into the Marine Corps - a new light armor capability. In the spring, 1983, while serving as Commanding Officer of the 10th Marines, the largest regiment in the Marine Corps with five battalions and the largest artillery unit in the world he volunteered for special assignment as the EUCOM liaison officer in Beirut working there from a small, temporary office in the British Embassy since the American embassy had been destroyed by a truck bomb a few weeks before. He retired and relinquished command of his regiment at Camp Lejeune in June, 1984. While on active duty he earned a Master of Science degree from the University of Southern California (Phi Kappa Phi) and continued graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Following retirement from the Marine Corps he served on graduate school faculties at the University of Southern California, the University of Denver and The George Washington University He earned his PhD degree in 1994. He retired from the GW faculty in 2008 and joined the faculty of the University College University of Maryland. His military decorations include the Legion of Merit, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Bronze Star with combat V for service in Vietnam, the Army Commendation Medal and the Lebanese Order of the Cedars conferred by the president of the Republic of Lebanon. He and his wife of more than sixty years have two children, Elizabeth and Larry, Jr., a nephew and ward, Jefferson Pike, and ten grandchildren. They live at their 200 year old home at Spring Hill Farm, Hamilton, Virginia.