Paul J. Cavise

LTC (R) Paul J. Cavise, J.D. was born in 1950 in New York. His father served in World War II, retired as a lieutenant colonel, and talked a lot about his combat experiences and assignments. At the age of fifteen, Cavise was an Eagle Scout, which aided his application to West Point in his senior year of high school. His grades were good enough for admission to Ivy League schools, yet his family could not afford the tuition. Other benefits from being a student at West Point included avoiding being drafted as an enlisted man, as well as getting a free college degree. In 1968, he entered the academy.

At West Point, Cavise transitioned from a civilian with long hair to a cadet in a military and severely structured environment, a radical change. During his four years at West Point, he played football as an offensive guard. Cavise also started a band while there, played saxophone and managed to successfully convince the school administration that the band was a good extracurricular activity.

Cavise summed up his time at West Point by telling the interviewer: “I put my mind in neutral after a period; it didn’t matter what it cost me in terms of education or sense of self-esteem or whatever I had to give up, I had to give it up to get my degree, and that’s what I was going for. I had to tolerate absurd honor codes and absurd religious ceremonies, and all those things that are traditionally done there that even today aren’t very politically correct. Every day, the number one seed (with the best grade in the class) would take attendance, report to the professor, and discipline pervaded everything you did.”

Cavise said that even walking casually could cause you to be harassed and receive demerits. He got in trouble once because he met his girlfriend and held her hand, so had to march back and forth on the quad for eight hours and was assigned eight demerits. Cadets would tell on each other all the time; Cavise said “that’s one of the things that I disliked the most”.

Cavise graduated from West Point in 1972 very high in his class academically, which enabled him to select his branch of service and the location where he would serve. He picked Air Defense Artillery, and was given the option of serving at Monterey, California, or Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Cavise chose the latter, because he was from the East Coast, wanted to pursue his graduate education, and the New York/New Jersey region offered more schools to choose from.

Cavise said, “you’re pretty screwed up by the time you get out [of West Point] after four years”. He was in West Point during Vietnam, and was convinced “West Pointers got shot in the back by their own troops more than anybody because they’re not in touch, and when they get out in the real world, it’s just really hard for them.”

On his first assignment, Cavise’s battery clerk helped him get through by giving him advice. When he got his assignment as a platoon leader, troops were coming back from Korea or Vietnam and assigned to posts in the United States, including Sandy Hook, a Nike Hercules base that was being closed. The mission there was essentially nonexistent. Cavise would bring a case of beer to the barracks at night, because he felt it was the only way he could get the troops to listen to him.

Sandy Hook was garrisoned by a dual Nike Hercules battalion, with a major in command and with a captain in command of each battery. A battery had three platoons, each of which had 10-15 men, but they were never at full strength. Cavise arrived at Sandy Hook in 1973, and by the end of 1974, the base was closed. Between the time of the closing announcement and the actual closing, the troops had to remove the Hercules missiles, which were armed with nuclear warheads.

Cavise really enjoyed his time at Sandy Hook, despite not having much to do aside from playing foosball. One time a general wanted the troops to keep busy, so he assigned them to paint rocks as the removal mission wound down. A colonel allowed Cavise to go to graduate school and gave him paid leave. Cavise received his MBA from Fairleigh-Dickinson University.

After Sandy Hook, Cavise was sent to his next assignment in El Paso, Texas, where he then got orders for Korea. Before he left for Korea, he went to the Pentagon and walked around its halls until he found an officer in the Adjutant General Corps, and advised him that he had been accepted into a PhD program at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and that going to Korea would interfere with his studies. The officer agreed, and changed his orders to Fort Dix, New Jersey.

When Cavise was studying for his doctorate, he went to work for the Army at 6:00 AM in the morning, then went to school, and got home at 11:00 PM, so he seldom saw or interacted with his child. He was at Fort Dix from the end of 1975 to 1977. In June 1977, after his five years of mandated service ended, Cavise resigned from the army and immediately got a job with a defense contractor. The head of his department liked him and allowed him to work at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. During the Reagan years, he did well and made a lot of money, and went to work for another company as a consultant at double the money he was making while working on the latest weapons systems.

The Strategic Defenses Initiative provided an incredible amount of money to defense contractors, and Cavise then went to work for Systems and Applied Sciences Corporation, a bigger company out of Washington, D.C., where he got involved with artificial intelligence. He went to law school, because they teach you inductive thought there, a skill that he used in jobs. Cavise got his law degree in 1980, but never practiced, because he was doing so well at the time and even started his own business during the 1980s.

Cavise called his five years on military active duty a “big investment,” and said that he “didn’t want to lose that investment, while at the same time I didn’t want to stay in the military”. When he left the Army, he got a letter in the mail from the Selective Service system, asking him to join their team, an offer he accepted, although he had to join the National Guard to become a member. The draft was ending, but young men were still required to register, so the boards were kept in place.

Cavise didn’t have to wear a uniform, but he had to work on the weekends and do annual training. He was responsible for manning draft boards by recruiting people to serve. Cavise also did temporary legal work for the Selective Service System. Just before retiring as a lieutenant colonel, he went to Trenton, New Jersey, where he was assigned to the Emergency Management Office, with the mission of working with civilians, fire departments, and state emergency management services, which he described as a “great mission for the National Guard.” Cavise received the Army Commendation Medal for his service.

Cavise returned to West Point for a 20-year reunion just to see his friends. He said that West Point should close, although “the intrinsic beauty of that place is just incredible, it’s just a huge waste of money”. Paul Cavise wrote a book about his experiences at West Point entitled USMA: Universally Simple-Minded Approach.

Additional Resources:

• Cold War at Fort Hancock
• Paul Cavise and Bill Fabian, Nike Missiles
• Selective Service drafts campaign with new look