M-A-R-A was founded in 1979 by three friends who served together during the Vietnamese War. Frankie DiRenzo, Nate Shiffer, and Ted Harvey met in 1971 while all assigned as crew to an Army LCM-8 Mod 2, used for troop and supply movement as well as salvage operations on military equipment left behind either by rapid troop movements and realignments. After the war they decided to use many of the skills they honed and contacts they made while in the Army by creating a private company that specialized in finding and recovering abandoned military artifacts and equipment, the Military Artifact Recovery Agency. Much of M-A-R-A’s early work was indeed as contractors for the U.S. government, in the days before massive base closing plans spawned their own system for reallocating and moving assets. In addition to their work in retrieving materials from former military installations, M-A-R-A also utilized the diving skills the partners learned while doing salvage work in Vietnam to begin recovering military items from undersea locations as well. In the 1990s M-A-R-A transitioned into doing contract work primarily for private collectors or smaller government agencies, as well the U.S. Army initiated their own relocation division. Today the only surviving founder, Nate Shiffer, continues M-A-R-A’s work on a limited scale and remains a leading authority on Vietnam War era and other military artifacts.