"The blacktop road in this picturesque neighborhood of Colonial Williamsburg is lined with Southern Magnolias, red maples, and flowering dogwoods, their leaves turned deep shades of red. Near the end of the road sits a red brick, colonial-style house, yellow and purple pansies bordering a path to the front door.
"Planting flowers is my exercise," says Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (Ret.), 87.
For 23 years, Van Riper shared the house with Lillie Catherine, whom he called LC, his beloved wife of 53 years who passed away in 2021. He designed the house at the end of a decades-long career, which began with his enlistment in the Marine Corps Reserve in the fall of 1956, continued with his commissioning as a second lieutenant in the fall of 1963, and culminated in his retirement as a three-star general after 41 years of service.
Van Riper, who earned two Silver Star medals for heroic action in the Vietnam War, is known as an independent thinker unafraid to challenge conventional wisdom. In the 2005 bestseller Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, journalist Malcolm Gladwell wrote about Van Riper and his performance in a military wargame called Millennium Challenge 2002 to illustrate how brilliant decision makers use intuition to break down complex situations…"
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Armand
