I've been thinking about Mario Cuomo lately, since he passed...
Fort Drum is a U.S. Army installation in upstate New York, and the home of the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), the Army's worst clusterfuck. It's the only army base that is not on federal land - the whole installation actually belongs to the State of New York, and the federal government pays them rent. (It's also the only army base that has a creek running through division headquarters, but that is a story for another time.)
Since Fort Drum was on land that belonged to the state of New York, Governor Mario Cuomo assumed the division also belonged to the state of New York. And since we were his division, once a quarter he flew from Albany to Fort Drum to speak to all the newly assigned sergeants and officers.
As I remember, he didn't really say much of anything...he told us about his state, gave us a little information about all the National Guard and Reserve units that commandeered the Back 40 every summer - as the only large Army post in the Northeast, we served hundreds of small units that needed our base's facilities for weapons qualification and all the other things you can't do in an armory next to a supermarket - explained a little about the political system in New York, and welcomed us to Fort Drum.
I can't think of another governor that did anything like that, and it was a nice thing.
