Professional Soldiers ® - COL Al DeProspero USA (ret)

Al DeProspero has made his final infiltration. He was a golden gloves boxer, a wrestler, commanded an A-Team on Oki in the early days with missions into Laos and Thailand, Commander B-22 (RVN) 1964-66, and if IIRC commanded 1st Bn, 5th SFG at Bragg in the early 70s, and was a commander of the Special Projects Support Activity (SPSA) in the early 80s. He is well known to many of the FOGS and VFOGS and many of you guys today are way better off because of his dogged determination to make sure that the SOF troops he supported had the best available equipment he could get either from the bureaucratic and slavishly inept DOD system or, more often, off the shelf tapping both into CONUS and OCONUS. For instance you folks wearing GORTEX are wearing it thanks to him and not to NATICK who totally screwed the pooch on this item by doing away with the light weight skins you all should have had as well as a light weight rain suit. There is a whole variety of ordance and wpns systems that you now have that he started the ball rolling on-especially in the black community. There are a number of Special Access Programs that have his imprint on them some of which I got to use latter in my career and others that are still viable today. Little birds are what they are today because of many of his efforts. The list is endless and his drive was tireless. I remember clearly one day when Jake Jakovenko and I walked into his office and Al was sitting there wearing that damn black Army sweater and Jake said, "Damn Sir, I see you are wearing that worthless sweather you can't take to the field". Next day Jake and I had a couple of kit bags full of polypro stuff that was being looked at for some of the units with a note-"This you can wear to the field!" . Most of you have probably never heard of him, but you are all better off for what he did behind the scenes because he was the one that worked to fill your requirements based on mission needs that your unit defined. RIP Al.