When Navy counterintelligence officer Tucker Bailey (NB) left the military in August to attend the HBS analytics program, he did not dream that just two months later, he would be facing a recall to active duty and another year in Bahrain, the post he had recently left.
But he, like most other U.S. citizens, did not dream that terrorists could level the World Trade Center.
While Bailey was not the first military veteran at HBS to be notified that he would be called up, it appeared that he would be the first to withdraw to return to active duty. However, a military paperwork glitch delayed the call-up he expected to come this week, and it now appears that he will be able to complete the term before reporting in December.
In addition to praising the HBS administration for its flexibility in accommodating his changing schedule (see related story), Bailey said the broader HBS community has been helpful as well, with his section holding a going away party and offering him encouragement.
“People really respect what you’re doing. A lot of people feel a little bit powerless, so they feel that it’s great that someone they know can do something about it,” he said in an interview last week.
Although Bailey is currently on inactive reserve status, he said that would have changed soon anyway, as he had made the decision when he left the Navy to remain part of the nation’s active reserve, whose members are typically among the first civilians to be recalled to active duty during periods of national security crises.
However, Navy officials told him those distinctions would not have mattered in his case, anyway-that he had been specified by name as having crucial skills and would have been activated even if he had not planned to join the active reserve.
Now, he said, he is waiting for the final details of his call-up to be completed, and to report for duty. And although he has spent only a few months at HBS, he believes he will be able to apply some of the information he has been exposed to right away.
“I’ve learned boatloads of information,” Bailey said. “It’s opened my eyes to this whole other world that I had never been exposed to before.”
