December, 2021.
Dick Marcinko dead at 81.
For a while, when I ran Close Quarter Combat Magazine in the late 90s and early 2000s, I was friends with Navy Seal Harry Constance of the “Good To Go,” book. As a result of knowing Harry, some of those visits I met Dick Marcinko through Harry and few other SEALS at two of their gatherings-events.
Marcinko was quite the drinker at that time period, and the first time we met he showed up walloped. And funny, I recall the intense, thick unshaven beard that night. I mean he looked like a caveman as his beard started at his eyebags on down like sod. Next day though, he was dried out and book-cover shaved, spit and polished.
We talked at these times and this started a email relationship back then as he had periodic questions about martial arts, I presumed for his novels and I would get the occasional email question on the topic. But most all those Rogue Warrior Novels were written with/by a friend of his named John Weisman. I recall that a number of readers thought these novels were true stories. I cannot remember for sure, but we may have run an article on him in CQC Magazine.
Dick got real busy with SOS Temps, a contracting company which later became Red Cell International. He had a variety of fiction and non-fiction books, a radio show and did various endorsements and consultancies, one was for the old 24 TV show. Harry Constance died a while back. And now Dick.
You will hear a lot of good and bad about Marcinko, and I have heard all that first hand from his mates themselves, but he was certainly a mover, a shaker, and colorful, hard charging character.
