How I almost met Robert McNamara ... by gimleteye

In the end, Robert McNamara said his mea culpas for the Vietnam War. He had been Secretary of Defense; his demeanor and bearing not unlike Donald Rumsfeld's -- utterly convinced he was right even when overwhelming evidence had proven him wrong.

I almost met McNamara, once. I had just finished my first year as an undergraduate at Yale, a university like other Ivy League schools where the surefire, wrong logic of the Domino Theory held a sturdy grip. On a blustery, late spring day, I took a ferry from Wood's Hole to Martha's Vineyard looking for as summer job. The season had not yet started and the vessel was nearly empty. In the middle of the passage, I went outside to the walkway in the lee of the wind. A lone figure leaned against the rail, staring at the sea and the vessel's surging wake. I could see his face. It was Robert McNamara.

I was young and strong as a bull. We each leaned by the rail on our forearms, captured by thoughts turned like a wave and set free in the wash fading without any record of what happened to them. After a while, he returned to the ferry cabin. A few months later, on that same passage, a stranger-- furious at McNamara for his prosecution of the war-- would try to throw him overboard. The obituary said he had been ill for a long time. Robert McNamara lived to the ripe age of 93.