The interview with LTC. Grady E. Taylor

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by Michelle Taylor-Frazier1 view·Updated Apr 16, 2022
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  1. Good afternoon,
  2. my name is Michelle Taylor fraser and today I will
  3. be talking about my father Colonel Grady E Taylor.
  4. The reason why I chose my father is that he was a
  5. double bronze award winner during the Vietnam War for his service
  6. and he was a great overall leader
  7. and father.
  8. Grady Taylor was born to Rina and Edward Taylor in Batesville Arkansas in 1936.
  9. During the time of segregation in the United States of America.
  10. His father died suddenly when he was 12 years old and his mother was left to raise him
  11. and to teach him all the values that he would use for the remainder of his life.
  12. Grady believed in achievement, hard work, justice and transparency.
  13. The first example that I would like to use,
  14. that taught him this value and self respect was
  15. he worked for a gentleman at a gas station.
  16. The gentleman always called him Rochester out of his name.
  17. But my dad still went to work after school each day.
  18. One day he asked my father to please train a new young man,
  19. which he did and a few weeks later the young man bragged to him,
  20. He got in his first paycheck when he shared how much he received.
  21. My father was devastated because his check was much less than that.
  22. So he got on his bike, he rode home and he was very upset.
  23. His mother said,
  24. do not worry about this grading because right always wins in the end.
  25. We'll soon behind. My dad came along his boss
  26. and he wanted to know why Grady had suddenly left the job.
  27. So he explained to him why he left and that he would not be working for him anymore.
  28. The man was so saddened by what had happened.
  29. He told brady he would give him a raise and he would
  30. pay him the same that he paid the other young man.
  31. That was my father's first lesson
  32. and what it was like to be treated an inequitable and unjust this man,
  33. he went back to work for the gentleman and worked for
  34. him until he found a better job in high school.
  35. No
  36. uh next area I'd like to talk about is what decision um, was my father.
  37. Well, he was proud of a lot of things,
  38. but more than that he really learned how to define his values.
  39. The leadership in the army. As a young man in Vietnam.
  40. So the second story that he told me about
  41. was in the name in north Korea law.
  42. He was called to move to delay. Suddenly after gentlemen was relieved of his
  43. duties,
  44. the unit was in mutiny.
  45. And so my father was sent there to investigate and be the new leader,
  46. but before he could begin everything, he had to tell them what had happened.
  47. He still found out that not only was the leader, not a racist,
  48. The gentleman just was a poor leader.
  49. My father was able to work with the different troops.
  50. Uh some America from from Vietnam and he was able to
  51. get everyone to work together by treating them as political.
  52. What he found out was. And being a transparent hardworking leader.
  53. He could get everyone to achieve the goals that he had set forth
  54. the vision that he had received from the United States Army.
  55. This along with his injury.
  56. Um, while he was there during that two won him his first bronze medal.
  57. Another story that I'd like to talk about which would concern his decision.
  58. That would be what he was most proud of.
  59. After the war,
  60. he was stationed in Fort Huachuca Arizona and he
  61. had been very concerned about how bloody Vietnam the different
  62. um services were unable to talk to each other.
  63. So marines could not talk to the community who could not talk to the army,
  64. who could not talk to the articles.
  65. Unfortunately
  66. the Air force this led to a lot of deaths that were unnecessarily by friendly fire.
  67. So he sat down and he wrote in a specimen that was worth a billion dollars
  68. if the court wanted
  69. and talked about all the different experiments that he could
  70. conduct as an electrical engineer to make sounds that could
  71. communicate into excuse me into words
  72. that could be used
  73. to help each area of the services communicate.
  74. Yeah.
  75. Once he did this,
  76. he wrote the assessment and sent it to Henry Kissinger
  77. who was then the person that was over all of the
  78. armed forces grant
  79. since you called him a couple of weeks later.
  80. And so you've got young, upstart captain from the name Vietnam who said yes,
  81. there I am, he said.
  82. We believe that this could work. So they sent him the billion dollar assessment,
  83. hold, his general about it and began a new electronic
  84. around
  85. Arizona
  86. That proving grounds has hired as many as 1400 workers at one time
  87. And brings in over $1 million dollars a week in revenue to the,
  88. what would you do that service?
  89. That depends on the area to this day.
  90. Today, I would like to thank you for having the opportunity to talk about my father,
  91. my hero, a great leader in the United States are Grady
  92. taylor.