Tom Clancy Essays (3341 words) - Tom Clancy,

Tom Clancy When choosing an author for my paper, I chose international suspense because I am very interested in foreign relations and the technology of modern day war. I have read stories by Edgar Allen Poe, with suspense and vivid imagery, which reminded me of Clancy's work. I decided to choose Tom Clancy because of his talent to weave such realistic tales of international suspense. Clancy creates the scenes in his books with such detail, it makes the reader feel like he/she is there. My first choice for this paper was Dr. Suess, but because he has passed away, I had to keep looking. I knew very little information about my author before writing this paper. I had read two of his books, but had no real knowledge of his personal life or past history. Tom Clancy, a successful American author of international suspense, has captured his love of military and technology and profitably employed it in the books he writes. The life of Thomas L. Clancy Jr. started like any other, but changed with the success of his work. He was born the year 1947, in the City of Baltimore, Maryland. His father was a postal carrier and also a store credit employer (Speace 98). Clancy spent his life educated in only Catholic schools. Because of this Clancy says, I was never swept up in the drugs or music(Cohen 2). He attended Loyola College in Baltimore Maryland, and earned a degree in English (Speace 98). At that time, Clancy then tried to enlist in the army. He was excused though, because of a case of myopia. I thought I would have made a good tank commander(Speace 99) , said Clancy, whose childhood dreams had been broken when he was kept from entering into the military. He then took on a career as an insurance agent in Baltimore Maryland, and kept that job until around 1973 (Speace 98). He then became a business owner from 1973 to the year 1980. In 1969, Clancy married a woman named Wanda Thomas, who was an eye surgeon and an insurance agency manager (Speace 98). They had four children, Michelle, Christine, Tom, and Kathleen, and a dog named Freddie (Cohen 115). They lived on 400 wooded acres in Maryland, along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Standing on the front lawn is a tank, given to him as a gift by his wife at the time (Schindehette 114). On the property there are also two tennis courts, two basketball courts, a full length football field and a shooting range (Greenberg 132). In one interview, Clancy was asked if he ever thought of changing houses. Clancy answered, Why should I change? I'm not going to make more money anywhere else (Zaleski 4). In the past 5 years, Clancy had some difficulty in his personal life. In 1995, Wanda Thomas filed for divorce. She had found out that Clancy had been having an affair with a woman named Katherine Huang. The tank that stood on their lawn was then seen as a metaphor for their years of marriage (Schindette 1). I thought our marriage was as fine as most people's, said Wanda, I will always love him in a certain way as the father of my children (Schindette 2). After the divorce, Clancy wanted to marry a lady named Alexandra Llewellyn, a 31 year old former televison reporter. He had been introduced to Llewellyn by one of her relatives, retired Gen. Colin Powell. The two got married on Saturday June 26, 1999, and are now living happily together in Clancy's estate on the Chesapeake Bay. Wanda Thomas received custody of the children, while Clancy pays $6,500 a month is child support, a payment that he considers to be a very serious one. Clancy has a firm belief in the importance of family, Fam ily is the beginning and end of everything that we are supposed to be working for (Greenberg 65). Clancy believes even stronger in the role of the father though, having been quoted saying, If you don't take care of your kids, what the hell good are you? I've certainly had a couple of hard lessons in that. And one of the things I fear is to be lying