Bucs Go Beyond
Colonel (Ret.) Michael Connolly and Vickie Connolly were, in Mike’s words, two kids making minimum wage from Madison, North Carolina.
Both would go on to achieve great success in their careers, building on the foundation created at East Tennessee State University.
Prior to moving with his family to Madison, Mike lived in Norman, Oklahoma, a big football town, so the sport was definitely in his blood. An assistant coach at his high school knew someone at ETSU and arranged a visit.
“The tryout did not go well, but my parents and I loved ETSU and Johnson City, and I was really inspired by our meeting with the criminal justice advisor, Nick Carimi,” Mike said. “Even though I was not going to spend my Sundays playing football, I wanted to be at ETSU.”
At freshman orientation in the summer of 1976, Mike was walking outside the old student union when his dad said, “Mike, talk to this gentleman,” who happened to be Capt. Troy Burrow who worked with the university’s ROTC program.
It would prove to be a lifechanging moment.
An “I’ll try it” led to a military history course his freshman year and a three-year scholarship, followed by a decorated 26-year career as a U.S. Army Aviator and then a branch transfer into the Army’s newly established Space Operations career field. His journey would include assignments in Kansas, Germany, Korea, Nebraska, and Colorado, as well as a return stint at ETSU.
Upon his retirement in 2006, he was Chief of Staff at Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center at Cheyenne Mountain Air Station in Colorado. He was in Colorado Springs on September 11 and recalls an occasion when he was in a room with three other military officers working together in support of the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks; all four of them were commissioned through the ETSU Buccaneer Battalion.
Throughout every step of Mike’s journey, Vickie was by his side.
They were, after all, high school sweethearts. “Our first date involved sharing a sausage pizza and pitcher of beer at a Pizza Hut in Greensboro, North Carolina,” he remembers. “From that moment, I was sold.”
Vickie’s introduction to ETSU was when she dropped Mike off at Browning Hall his freshman year. “I still remember seeing her face looking through the rearview window as she and my parents pulled away.”
After his junior year, the couple was married and lived on campus in married student
housing.
It was a faculty appointment in the Department of Military Science that brought the
Connollys back to campus in the late 1980s, and both of them used this opportunity
to earn master’s degrees – a master of city management for Mike and an M.Ed. in reading
for Vickie.
Vickie would spend her career as a champion for reading education. Upon her passing in 2014, she was an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Academy where she taught for 15 years and claimed the 2009 Outstanding Academy Educator award. Other faculty appointments were with Big Bend Community College and Pikes Peak Community College.
“We had dreams of traveling and spending our years together,” Mike said. “The decision to set up the scholarship was one made by myself and our daughter, and we wanted to do something for adult students who were returning back to school, just like Vickie did.”
The Vickie Marks Connolly Clemmer Graduate Scholarship was created to provide scholarship assistance to deserving graduate students enrolled in education-related studies in the Clemmer College of Education and Human Development, where Vickie once was a student.
“Education, literacy, and reading were very important to Vickie,” Mike said.
Mike has also established an ROTC scholarship for ETSU ROTC cadets, with preference to those pursuing an education degree, and the Great Buc Educator Exam Fund, which assists ETSU students with costs related to the Praxis licensing exam for educators.
By Joe Smith | Photo Contributed
Read more incredible stories in the Summer 2025 Edition of ETSU Today. #BucsGoBeyond
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