On May 22, 2012, Lieutenant General Thomas P. Bostick became the 53rd U.S. Army Chief of Engineers and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Lieutenant General Bostick serves as the senior military officer overseeing most of the nation’s civil works infrastructure and military construction. He succeeds Maj. Gen. Merdith Temple, who served as Acting Chief of Engineers from June 17, 2011 to May 22, 2012, following Lieutenant General Robert Van Antwerp, who served from 2007 to 2011.

 

Bostick was born circa 1956 to a military family, as his father retired from the Army as a Master Sergeant, one of his brothers became an Army colonel, and his father-in-law retired from the Marine Corps as a Sergeant Major. Bostick earned a BS (no major) at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1978, and an MS in both Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 1985. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Army War College. He has been a licensed Professional Engineer in Virginia since 1988.

 

Commissioned an Army Second Lieutenant in June 1978, Bostick served a variety of positions in the 54th Engineer Battalion in Bamberg, Germany, from October 1978 to December 1982. After two-and-a-half years of engineering study, Bostick taught mechanical engineering at West Point from June 1985 to June 1988. He then spent another year in school, this time at the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from July 1988 June 1989, followed by a year in Washington D.C., as a White House Fellow at the Department of Veterans Affairs from August 1989 to August 1990.

 

Posted back to Germany, Bostick served a year, from June 1990 to June 1991, as an Engineer Operations Staff Officer with United States Army Europe and the Seventh Army, Germany, before serving two Operations assignments with the 1st Armored Division from June 1991 to June 1993.

 

After a year as Executive Officer to the Chief of Engineers, Bostick, by this point a Lieutenant Colonel, was given command of the 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Riley, Kansas, where he served from June 1994 to July 1996. Following a ten-month course of study at the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, Bostick commanded the Engineer Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, from July 1997 to June 1999, including participation in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 

Back in Washington, Bostick served as Executive Officer to the Army Chief of Staff from June 1999 to May 2001, and as Deputy Director for Operations at the National Military Command Center from May 2001 to August 2002. He then served as Assistant Division Commander of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, from August 2002 to June 2004, followed by service as USACE Director of Military Programs, with duty as Commander of the Persian Gulf Region Division, from June 2004 to July 2005. Bostick then served four years, from October 2005 to May 2009, as the Army’s top recruiter, Commanding General of the Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Kentucky. After a year as Special Assistant to the Army Chief of Staff, Bostick served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel starting in February 2010.

 

He is married to Renée Bostick, who is an elementary school principal in Arlington, Virginia. They have one son, Joshua.

-Matt Bewig