Fort George G. Meade: The First 100 Years

James A. S
1955-
James A. Speraw Jr. was born and raised in Waterbury
Connecticut. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the Army.
After Basic Training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and AIT at
Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, he was stationed at Fort
Meade as a SIDPERS data analyst in 1974. While at Fort
Meade, Jim volunteered at the then closed Fort Meade
Museum and was bitten by the history bug. Dressed in
a WWI uniform, he helped reopen the museum on
Armed Forces Weekend, May 1976. In September 1976,
during his last week in the Army, Jim's goodbye gift to
the museum was repainting the Renault tank. Jim returned
home to Connecticut, and after several jobs and two years
at the University of Connecticut, Jim came back to the
Fort Meade Museum in October 1980, employed as a
Museum Aide, and earned a degree in History from the
University of Maryland in 1986. He had worked his way
up to Museum Technician when in 1991 he was deployed
to Desert Storm as part of the Army Museum System's