Robert Hunter Coffin, Jr.
Bob graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1964,
where he participated in the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) program and
received a commission as 2nd Lieutenant. His father pinned on his gold bars. Bob got a student deferment for two years so
he could attend graduate school at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He was called to active duty in the Fall of
1966, and was sent to Infantry Officer Basic School at Fort Benning, GA, then
Fort Holabird in Baltimore, MD for Basic Intelligence School. He was then to
Fort Snelling, MN where he ran Background Investigations and
Counterintelligence Operations (including a special team assignment to Chicago
during the Martin Luther King Jr. riots, where he drew his first hostile combat
fire). Following Minnesota, Bob was sent to Vietnam, where he ran a Human
Intelligence unit in the Mekong Delta and Saigon.
After Vietnam (1969-1970), Bob went to Advanced Intelligence
School, and was then assigned as part of the Army’s liaison team to the
National Security Agency at Fort Meade, MD.
In 1973 he was sent to Fort Lewis, WA commanding an Intelligence Field
Office and later transferring to the 9th Inf Div as a Tactical Intelligence Officer.
Bob was reassigned to the Pentagon in Washington, DC in 1978
to serve in the National Intelligence Alert Center as a North Asia specialist.
There, he prepared intelligence briefings for high ranking generals and the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was a key player in developing the
Indications & Warning (of impending conflict) System.
Bob’s last assignment was a four year tour in Korea working
for the Joint Intelligence Staff of U.S. Forces Korea. The work involved monitoring
North Korean activity, overseeing daily briefings, developing Indicators and Warnings
of overt military action, and coordinating Psychological Warfare operations.
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hunter Coffin, Jr. retired from the
United States Army in 1986. He adds
that, “somewhere along the way I became designated as a Korean Foreign Area
Officer… a role I continued to play with the CIA and [other agencies] for some
time. Bob took up a second career as a
history teacher, doing his best Hervey Bowden imitation in area high
schools. He retired from his second
career in June of 2012.
Bob and his wife Sheila live in Fairfax, VA with three
Poodles (Bob has his “standards”…) and four of five children living in the
state.
Editor’s note: Our Hubbardston classmate Bob Coffin has
been described as a "drink from a fire hose."
He is a gregarious, garrulous, generous, and gifted gourmet. The
fruits and vegetables of his gardens are served up in an amazing range of
compotes, condiments, preserves, and salsas.
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