James N. Mattis, born on September 8, 1950, in Pullman, Washington, to Lucille (Proulx) Mattis, a Canadian immigrant who served in U.S. Army Intelligence during World War II, and John West Mattis, a merchant mariner who worked on the Manhattan Project in Richland, Washington, grew up in a bookish household without a television. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1969 while attending Central Washington University on an ROTC scholarship, earning a B.A. in History in 1971 and being commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1972. A career Marine officer rising to four-star general over 44 years, Mattis commanded units in key operations including Task Force 58 in Afghanistan (2001), the 1st Marine Division in Iraq (2003), U.S. Central Command (2010-2013), and U.S. Joint Forces Command (2007-2010). Nicknamed 'Mad Dog' Mattis and 'The Warrior Monk' for his bachelorhood, intellectualism, and devotion to military history—he owns over 7,000 books—he retired in 2013. Post-retirement, Mattis served as a distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, co-edited 'Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military' (2016), and authored the bestseller 'Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead' (2019). He joined boards including Theranos (criticized amid its 2015-2018 fraud scandal, charged by SEC), General Dynamics (2013-2017, rejoined 2019), and as Senior Counselor at The Cohen Group. Confirmed as the 26th U.S. Secretary of Defense in 2017 despite a congressional waiver for active-duty retirees, he resigned in December 2018 over policy disagreements with President Trump on Syria withdrawal. A respected military strategist and leading voice on U.S. defense policy, he was a lifelong bachelor until marrying physicist Christina Lomasney in June 2022, has no children, and was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution in 2021.