Lieutenant Colonel Jim Rice was commissioned a Lieutenant of Armor following his graduation as a Distinguished Military Graduate from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, in 1971.
As an Armor Officer, he spent several years overseas including Germany as a Company Commander and in Korea as a member of the Combined Forces Command. Other assignments included: staff and faculty positions at the Armor School at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, and at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He served as an Armored Cavalry Platoon Leader at Fort Hood, Texas, as a member of the Recruiting Command in Tennessee and Kentucky, the Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Virginia, and the Congressional Activities Team, Office of Army Chief of Staff, at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. He retired from the military in 1992 and continued his career in public education.
He taught a technology course at Hines Middle School, Newport News, Virginia for one year and has served as an Army Junior ROTC Senior Army Instructor in two high schools: Cross High School in Cross, South Carolina where he started a new JROTC program in 1993, and at Hopewell High School in Hopewell, Virginia from 1996 to 2004. He is currently the guidance counselor at the alternative school in Williamsburg, James City County, Virginia. LTC Rice has delivered instruction to the School of Education, William and Mary College and to the ROTC Department at North Georgia College and State University. He is a member of the Hampton Roads Chapter of the Military Order of World Wars, and a board member of the American Independent Foundation of Colonial Virginia.
His education includes a Bachelor of Science Degree in Sociology from Virginia Tech, and a Master of Science Degree in Psychology and Counseling from Long Island University. He is also a graduate of the Armor Officer’s Basic and Advanced Courses and the Command and General Staff College. He studied Tae Kwon Do martial art while in Seoul, South Korea. Most recently he has become an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
The son of a college professor and a civil servant with the Department of Labor, Lieutenant Colonel Rice was born in Flint Michigan on October 30, 1949. He grew up in Arlington, Virginia, where he graduated from Wakefield High School in 1967. He and his wife Donna were married in 1994 and live in Williamsburg, Virginia. Between them they are blessed with one son, four daughters, and four grandchildren. He is proud of his two son-in-laws, both of whom are currently serving in the Army.
Jim was appointed Assistant Director of the American Independence Foundation of Colonial Virginia in January 2007.
He plays the keyboard, piano and especially loves the accordion which he plays weekly at a local Italian Restaurant. He teaches the long-lost art of the squeezebox.