Larry Bond was raised in a traditional family environment, which included a working father, stay at home mother, and a brother and sister. The scenic area of Los Gatos, California overlooked what is now Silicon Valley, although as he was growing up, the valley was mostly prune and apricot orchards. During summers, he worked on farms picking apricots and prunes, bailing hay, and driving tractors. By the time he graduated from Gatos high school in 1958, he had considered becoming a United Methodist Minister and enrolled in San Jose State College as a Psychology/Philosophy major. Although admitted in the top ten percent of entering freshmen, he became academically disqualified in his fourth semester passing only Humanities and Chemistry. When his family moved to Aptos, on the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, overlooking Monterey Bay, he enrolled in Cabrillo College, where he graduated in their first graduating class, the Class of 1961. The campus had not yet been finished, and the small graduating class held their ceremony on a dirt construction site. Classes had been held at Watsonville High School. After re-establishing himself as a student in good standing at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, Bond applied for the Navy's Aviation Cadet program where he was among the few to meet the required academic standards but failed when it was discovered he had postnasal drip and could not fly in aircraft requiring a pressure suit. Broke and discouraged, Bond hitchhiked over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Army recruiting station in San Jose, where he joined the Army enlisting for Armor Europe. While in Europe, he married his college girlfriend, had a son, and took an orientation flight in a helicopter. After that, he wanted to fly which required that he be an officer, so he signed up for Officer Candidate School. Following graduation, he entered flight school and was assigned to the First Cavalry Division's Aerial Rocket Artillery (ARA) battalion where he excelled. Between tours in Vietnam, he earned a degree in Economics, transitioned to the AH-1G Cobra, got divorced and began his second combat tour as a single parent of two. The second tour was relatively uneventful. He returned to attend to the Officer Advanced Course. Bond spent half of his first ten years in the army as a full-time student. Peacetime command in the post-Vietnam era was not a good fit for him, but he did well as a test management officer in Research and Development (R&D). Bond reverted to his former enlisted rank of sergeant following the post-Vietnam reduction in force (RIF). Following artillery assignments as a fire direction specialist, he retired at his highest active rank, Major, and began a second career in Junior Reserve Officer's Training Corps (JROTC).
