Colin Powell

Colin Powell married Alma Johnson in 1962. The couple has a son, Michael and two daughters, Linda and Annemarie. His favorite pastime is restoring old Volvo and Saab cars.

Powell was born to Maud Arial and Luther Theophilus Powell, Jamaican immigrant parents. Brought up in the South Bronx, Powell graduated, in 1954, from Morris High School.

He completed his BS degree in Geology from the City College of New York in 1958, and obtained an MBA degree from the George Washington University, thirteen years later.

While Powell studied Geology, he joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) and received training. He became commander of his unit and enjoyed the experience, which helped him choose a military career.

After graduation, he joined the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant. In 1962, he was sent as an adviser to Vietnam, but was wounded by a punji-stake booby trap, while patrolling the Vietnamese-Laotian border.

From 1968 to 1969, now a young major, he visited Vietnam to investigate the My Lai massacre incident when American forces allegedly killed 300 civilians. His report gave the American forces a clean chit.

He was awarded a White House fellowship in the Nixon administration from 1972 to 1973. He worked as the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Caspar Weinberger.

In the 1980s, he was posted at Fort Carson, Colorado. He was the senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, during the invasion of Grenada and the airstrike on Libya.

Powell became prominent during the Operation Desert Storm in Iraq in 1991. In keeping with his ‘Powell Doctrine’, he advocated maximum force to get maximum success and minimum fatalities.

To mobilize international support for the invasion of Iraq, he addressed the United Nations Security Council in 2003, and forcefully argued that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons and the means to manufacture more.