Ralph Shelton and my wife taught at Kingsbury High School in Memphis, TN in the mid-seventies. Ralph headed up the JROTC program and he selected her to be the program sponsor. In 1979, when my wife and I met and married, she told me about Ralph. Ralph and I had the opportunity to meet a number of times, and once he even gave me an autographed copy of the True magazine article that described his experiences in Bolivia.
He was a kind, gentle and soft spoken man, and you'd never know through casual conversation that you were speaking to one of the U.S. Army's greatest Special Forces officers.
I am glad that I got to meet and know this extraordinary man. He will be missed. Requiescat in pace.
You have certainly met the who's who of SF. I worked as Assistant S-3 for Huge Shelton in Vietnam (later Head of the Joint Chief of Staff). That 's it for the famous...