A Tribute to Richard Mai

By: Richard Gilbert, QMS Director, SMS

Richard Mai retired this week after 39 incredible years with SMS. It’s hard to believe that when I started with SMS in 1997, he had already been with the company for a dozen years. Richard was central to SMS’ outstanding reputation at the Pentagon, as well as to the company’s culture. He was inside the Pentagon on 9/11 and was a key part (along with Linh Pham, who retired from SMS in 2021) of building the emergency networks in the following days. It’s difficult to put into words exactly what Richard Mai means to me both personally and professionally; the two are inexorably intertwined. And as for what he means to SMS, he is a legend. Below are a couple stories, outside of 9/11, that stand out for me. 

Richard influenced SMS engineers greatly with his extreme attention to detail and organizational skills. At a time when network engineering at the Pentagon meant racking, patching, then configuring all the devices, his implementations always looked like works of art, with the cables dressed perfectly, and all the labels reflecting the precise rack number, rack unit, device name, etc. A customer once said that “if it looks that good on the outside, I’m confident that the same high standard is applied to the inside”, referring to the configuration of the devices. 

On one occasion we were wrapping up an ASI (Authorized System Interruption) at around midnight and were checking out with the NOC. On their big screen, there was a big red dot at RPN (Rosslyn Plaza North). RPN was connected to the Pentagon network and serviced a number of customers. When we asked about the “big red dot”, the NOC staff said there was a high temp alarm in the WAN room but there wasn’t much they could do about it.

We (Richard, Linh Pham, and I) immediately drove to RPN to investigate and found that we couldn’t get into the WAN room as we didn’t have the combination to the door. This was a little frustrating as we knew that prolonged exposure to heat would damage the network gear in the WAN room resulting in a prolonged outage for the entire building.

I walked over to the security desk to see if they could open the door – they couldn’t, they didn’t have the combination either. When I turned around, however, the WAN room door was gone. Removed. Richard and Linh noticed that the hinges were on the outside and removed them and the door. As we expected, the A/C was not operational but now at least there was fresh air coming into the WAN room. Richard then walked over to the Security desk and dragged the security guard over to the WAN room and instructed him to stand there and not let anyone enter the room! The security guard complied without question – there was a reason that Richard’s nickname was “General Mai”.

Thank you, Richard, for four decades of outstanding work. We wish you the happiest and healthiest retirement!