Page 14 - BusinessWest November 9, 2020

Veterans in Business
A ‘Family Business’
Writer’s Novels Will Chronicle Generations of Service in the Marines
By George O’Brien
The story sounds like some of the fiction that Tom Hebert now devotes much of his non-working time to writing.
“Discipline and leadership ... that’s what I took away from the Marines. It shows in the respect I have for people, including
the people who work for me — treating them well, treating them with respect.”
But it’s not.
Flashing back to when he was in high school, Hebert said he and his father, William, were hav- ing a talk about what he might do with his life, career-wise. The elder Hebert had just used his last match to light a cigarette, and after doing so,
he noticed the ad on the back of the matchbook: ‘Become a CPA.’
“He handed me the matchbook cover, and I said, ‘OK, I’ll look into it,’ said Hebert, who would earn a degree in accounting at American Inter- national College. Eventually, he would join what was then one of the ‘Big 8’ accounting firms, Lybrand, Ross Bros. & Montgomery, and subse- quently work in a number of other settings in Connecticut and Massachusetts, including Cam- bridge Credit Counseling, which he currently serves as chief financial officer.
But while the saga of how he wound up in financial services is intriguing and makes for good reading, Herbert’s story is largely about what else he’s done with his life, starting with his time in the Marine Corps, which included a stint in Vietnam in 1970, as that conflict was begin- ning to wind down in many ways (much more on that later).
More recently, a second career has emerged: writing fiction, specifically about Marines.
His first book, The Remains of the Corps, Vol- ume I: Ivy & the Crossing, which he authored
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14 NOVEMBER 9, 2020
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