Keith Oliver chairs the Public Affairs Leadership Department at Defense Information School, Ft. Meade, Md. He retired from the Marines in 2004 as PAO for the Second Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF) and was concurrently assigned as Director of Consolidated Public Affairs at the Force’s headquarters base of Camp Lejeune, N.C.
The former Marine sergeant was commissioned in 1978 and served in a variety of mostly public affairs billets, including participation in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, and deployments to Lebanon, Panama and Somalia.
Stateside duty included the Carolinas, Virginia, Louisiana, Florida and Washington, D.C., in assignments ranging from aide-de-camp (4th Marine Aircraft Wing, New Orleans) to public affairs plans officer in the Pentagon and at the U.S. Central Command (Tampa).
From 1985-88, Oliver taught English at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
He was posted as the Marine Corps Representative and Director of Public Affairs, Journalism and Photojournalism at the Defense Information School, Ft. Meade, Md. from 1995-97.
Reared in Eustis, Fla. where he worked as a sports editor, Oliver is an Asbury College (Wilmore, Ky.) alumnus and holds graduate degrees from the University of Oklahoma, the Naval War College (Newport, R.I.) and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (Washington, D.C.).
He is an Eagle Scout.
A frequent contributor to professional journals, Oliver has received award recognition from the Marine Corps Gazette and the Naval Institute Proceedings. He is a past president of the USMCCCA and received the group’s Donald L. Dickson Memorial Award in l987.
Oliver has been involved in Kiwanis and Royal Rangers among other youth, civic and church organizations and, in l991, was named Member of the Year by the Havelock, N.C. Chamber of Commerce.
He has three grown children and eight grandchildren. Keith’s wife, the former Ceresse Comer of Tangerine, Fla., died in 2007.
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