Donald F. van Eynde

One of my US Army battalion commanders was Lieutenant Colonel Donald F. van Eynde. Despite the fact that although he said I could be excused from serving as the battalion TOC driver, I had to do it anyway, I rather liked him. He was competent, and was not one of those officers who are full of themselves and have let their power go to their heads.

As I was writing what I loosely call my "memoirs", I wondered whatever happened to him, and a quick Bing search yielded some results!

After he left 2/39 INF, he was assigned as the executive officer of the US Army Organizational Effectiveness Center and School, at Fort Ord, California. The informational brochure about the school that I found online listed his rank as LTC(P). The "(P)" in a rank designation indicates that the soldier is "Promotable". Which in turn means that the soldier has been slated to be promoted, but hasn't yet pinned the new rank on. So, I take it that he was eventually promoted to full colonel.

In an entry in Bing.com for ZoomInfo (the actual referenced page no longer exists) it noted that he was "the Chair, Crisis Management Team at Trinity University based in San Antonio, Texas. Previously, Donald was the U. S. Army at U.S. Mission to the United Nations." Further information I found online indicated that he was the chair of the Business Administration department at Trinity University.

There is at least one book authored by him, published in 1997, "Organization Development Classics: The Practice and Theory of Change--The Best of the OD Practitioner," with his wife, Dixie Cody van Eynde, listed as editor. The book appears to be a compilation of organizational development articles.

He was born on 7 September 1937, probably in Texas. As of this writing, he would be 85 years old, and I don't know if he's still around, but I haven't found an obituary so far.