Collegiate Times

Sam Riley

In the 1960s, many young men were yanked from their homes and thrown into the front lines of duty, drastically altering their lives forever.

While many undergo tragedy in the military, one man experienced an extraordinary positive life change — one that he cherishes to this day.

For Sam Riley, who is now a communication professor at Virginia Tech, combat was not in his job description.

“My two years of service came just before our involvement in Vietnam, so I was just lucky I missed all of the shooting,” he said.

Riley served as a publications officer with an intelligence group in a small town near Frankfurt, Germany, where he illustrated and edited intelligence reports for most of northern Europe.

”What I did was not James Bond-like in the least, but we had people who did the spook stuff; they had little hidden cameras and stuff just like in the movies,” Riley said.

During his time in Germany, Riley stayed in a government-owned mansion, which he came across himself. The building was previously used as an intelligence safe house, but Riley convinced his commanding officers to let him and his fellow soldiers use it as a “bachelor pad.” 

“At night, we would go into the town and eat dinner and carouse with the Germans our age there,” he said. “They were a delightful group. It was an incredibly good two years. I can still hardly believe it.”

Riley’s safety serving his country seems like a remarkable stroke of luck, which is no surprise, as good fortune has always been part of his life.

At Davidson College, located near Charlotte, N.C., Riley received his undergraduate education and resolved to study marketing, in light of the few academic options offered.

Since the U.S. military draft was active at the time, Riley enrolled as a cadet in the ROTC, allowing him to enter his service as a lieutenant.

After he earned his degree at Davidson, Riley attended the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to obtain his MBA.

Riley presumed he would make a living as a businessman; however, his life took an unexpected turn.

“I didn’t set out to be a professor at all. If anyone would have told me when I was younger that I would become a professor, I would have laughed and laughed and probably would have thrown something at them,” Riley said.

After he completed his required two years of military service, Riley had the lofty vision of having his own home with elegant Danish furniture, inspired by the once-lived German mansion.

Surprisingly, this idea led him to teaching.

He took a job at the University of Maryland teaching a basic business administration course with one goal — to use his earnings to purchase his much-desired household fittings.

“(It was) not exactly the best reason to get a teaching job,” Riley said.

But the job seemed to please the newfound teacher — Riley decided he wanted to make a living from teaching. Setting out to make this goal a reality, he returned to UNC to obtain his doctorate degree.

Although he initially sought his doctorate in business, based on his previous academic pursuits, an acquaintance convinced him otherwise.

“I ran into this guy who was a brand new, young professor, and he got to telling me what they were doing in the journalism school with their brand new doctoral program,” Riley said. “It sounded so much more doggone interesting than what I would have been doing that I switched.”

Plotting a new path, Riley began his teaching career in communication in 1970 at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Within a few years, he was offered an opportunity to start his own journalism program at Georgia Southern University, which ended up being a contender to that of its prestigious state-rival the University of Georgia.

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A version of this article appeared in the Jan 27 issue of the Collegiate Times.