Lacey B Ivory

Sergeant Major, United States Army - twenty-four years, finishing as senior enlisted military assistant in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs.

He was born at Marvell in Arkansas, the third of eight children, and the family moved to Kansas City when he was two. He finished at Manual High School and joined the Army in 1977.

He took an associate's degree at Des Moines Area Community College, a bachelor's from the University of the State of New York and a master's in education and counselling from Maryland's European division - all of them while serving, through long hours and weekends, deployments and military schooling. Asked what had been hardest, he said finding the time: for research and study, for his family, and for keeping up the skills the job needed.

He served twice at Fort Riley, at Fort Jackson, twice in Germany, at the recruiting command in Des Moines, at Fort Benjamin Harrison and at Army Space Command in Colorado.

He was a founding member of the Heidelberg Gospel Service and a deacon at Emmanuel Missionary Baptist in Colorado Springs, and gave his time to the Big Brothers programme. He meant to teach or counsel when he retired - adolescents at high school, or troubled young people in mental health work - and wanted to write a book about how ordinary people could make a success of life without making millions.

His wife Lieutenant Colonel Deborah Ivory, his daughters Adenika, Maisha, Quawana and Rashida, his grandchildren Quashawna and Quandale, his parents John and Redia, and his seven brothers and sisters.