Set in Stone

In May 1964, alumni Miles Cortez, Jesse Wisdom, and Al Murphy were commissioned as U.S. Army officers after completing their ROTC training on Trinity’s campus. After graduating, the trio left campus and would  eventually serve in the Vietnam War.

Wisdom and Murphy never returned home. Both U.S. Army captains and helicopter pilots, Murphy was killed in Binh Duong province in June 1967, while Wisdom died in Thua Thien province in February 1970.

Cortez, now a member of the Trinity Board of Trustees, is spearheading a campaign to honor Wisdom, Murphy, and all other alumni who gave their lives during the Vietnam War with an on-campus memorial.

“As Trinitonians, we can take pride in these men who volunteered to serve our country,” Cortez says. “Hopefully, this memorial will give students an appreciation of Trinity’s long legacy of service.”

Michael Bacon ’89, vice president for Alumni Relations and Development, says his department is turning to the Trinity community to complete an exhaustive list of all Trinity alumni who lost their lives in Vietnam.

Trinity already has an on-campus plaque dedicated to Thomas Chenault ’69, an army captain who died in April 1971 in Thua Thien province, and Bacon says the new marker will include Chenault, Wisdom, Murphy, and any other alumni his department can confirm died in Vietnam. The deadline for submission onto this list is March 1.

“Trinity is like a big family,” Bacon says. “If you know a Trinity graduate who meets these criteria, we need you to tell us, so the whole family can remember what they did.”

Cortez remembers Murphy and Wisdom well. The three were ROTC classmates—mandatory for all able-bodied male Trinity first-years and sophomores in the 1960s.

“Jesse Wisdom was this wonderful, gregarious, popular football player from New Braunfels,” Cortez recalls. “Murphy, from San Antonio, was a good student and much more gung-ho about ROTC.”

After the two-year ROTC mandate, Trinity students had the option to stay in ROTC voluntarily to become commissioned as an officer after graduation. Many, like Murphy, Wisdom, and Cortez, preferred serving as commissioned officers to entering the military through the draft, Cortez explains.

Cortez followed his Trinity experience by studying at the Northwestern University School of Law for three years, graduating in 1967. He began his Army service as a 1st Lieutenant in November 1967. After completing the Infantry Officers Basic Course at Fort Benning, Ga. and attending counter-intelligence school in Maryland, he arrived in Vietnam as part of the 1st Infantry division, the historic “Big Red One.” There, Cortez rose to the rank of captain.

From 1970 to 2001, Cortez was a business trial lawyer, then joined AIMCO,  a real estate investment trust as Executive Vice President. He’s spent more than a decade as a member of Trinity’s Board of Trustees, and has a family that boasts eight Trinity alumni.

But during the decades following his service, Cortez had no idea his classmates hadn’t made it out of Vietnam. Cortez actually found out about Murphy and Wisdom’s fate at a class reunion, when the organizer of the event called for a moment of silence to commemorate all classmates who had passed away, and the pair’s names were mentioned.

Now, Cortez wants the planned marker to serve as more than a list—he wants the memorial to serve as inspiration for current students to make time in their lives for service.

“This doesn’t have to mean the military,” Cortez says. “Back in my day, the Peace Corps was just getting started, other patriotic non-profits had yet to be founded, so the military was how many served. Today, there are so many more ways to serve. It’s important for today’s students to recognize the contributions that Trinity people like Wisdom and Murphy made.”