The K-School's Mid-Career Stars

When State Representative Thomas J. Vallely (D-Boston) graduated from high school in 1967, he was not very interested in politics. In fact, he was not very interested in going to college. A year in Vietnam changed all that.

Valley, now completing his second year in the Kennedy School of Government's mid-career Master of Public Administration (MPA) program, differs from most veterans by looking back on his one-year tour of duty with the Marines in Vietnam as "a positive experience."

But when Vallely reflects on the war, he speaks in a slow, serious tone about how Vietnam transformed him from a "very ordinary guy not trying to be anything but ordinary" into "a very seriously politicized and involved activist."

"If you went to my high school class and said to my classmates that Tom Vallely would be at the JFK School, they would probably laugh," he says. "But Vietnam had a very profound effect on me."

What touched Vallely was the futility of the war. Most of the Marines in his unit. Vallely says, finished their tours prematurely by going home either crippled or dead. "What struck me most was how lucky I was to get out in one piece," he says.

When Vallely returned from the war to his hometown of Newton, he sought to shed previous apathy's and get more involved in community life. But, like many other men who served in Vietnam, Vallely had to cope with inner problems of listlessness and boredom. Working from nine to five at a civil engineering firm, he says, eventually became a grind.

In 1969, Vallely walked off his job, went to the campaign headquarters of anti-war congressional candidate Robert Drinan and asked to be put to work doing "anything." As a type of political handyman for Drinan, he performed every job from poster-hanger to chauffeur, gaining valuable experience in the process.

Vallely says he fell in love with politics during the successful Drinan race, but admits, "If I had not gone to Vietnam. I probably would not have been involved in politics," adding. "I came back much more interested."

Part of that interest propelled the Newton native to go to college five, years after leaving high school. He attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, but that did not keep him on the political sidelines. His extracurricular activities included managing a successful congressional campaign in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a project he characterizes as "worth it, but a bit of a commute."

After college and a year of political consulting, Vallely became "sick of giving advice" and in 1980 won the State Representative seat that Barney Frank '61 gave up in his bid for Congress. In his second year in the State House, where he worked on civil service reform, Vallely won the Rapport Scholarship, which pays for public servants to study at the K-School.

Vallely is one of the few mid-career students at the K-School who continues to hold a full-time job while enrolled. He admits that he would be a better state representative this year it he was not simultaneously studying, but adds that the two year education will help in the long run with his effectiveness in public management.

The representative says the double life, when added to the responsibility of caring for a wife and three-year-old daughter is "very demanding "In fact, earlier this week he pulled an all night" and then had to skip a class so he could vote against the death penalty in the House.

But Vallely stresses that more public managers should be augmenting their skills in training programs similar to the one at the K-School. He says that while most public managers currently come from business school that trend will change with the emergence of K-School type public policy schools, which he thinks can offer a more varied curriculum. "The different subjects that you are exposed to here give one a broad overview and make it more useful to a public manager than going to the Harvard Business School," he says.