Melvin Robert "Bom" Laird is an American politician and writer. He was a U.S. congressman from Wisconsin before serving as Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973 under President Richard Nixon. Laird was instrumental in forming the administration's policy of withdrawing U.S. soldiers from the Vietnam War; he invented the expression "Vietnamization," referring to the process of transferring more responsibility for combat to the South Vietnamese forces. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, grew up and attended high school in Marshfield, Wisconsin, although he attended Lake Forest Academy in Lake... Forest, Illinois his junior year. He was nicknamed "Bambino" by his mother. Laird was the grandson of William D. Connor, the Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin from 1907 to 1909. His niece is Jessica Laird Doyle, wife of former Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle. He graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota in May 1944, having enlisted in the United States Navy a year earlier. Following his commissioning as an ensign, he served on a destroyer, the USS Maddox , in the Pacific.
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