Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
In a world where storytelling has been our link to the past since the days of cave drawings, there exists a timeless tradition. It's the art of passing down knowledge, and for Military Veterans, it's a crucial piece of their legacy. Join us on the Veterans Archives Podcast, where we dive deep into the heartwarming and awe-inspiring stories of those who served, no matter when or where.
Here, Veterans get the chance to be the authors of their own narratives. Through guided interviews in a relaxed and safe environment, they paint their experiences with their own words and unique voices. The result? A memory card in a presentation box, a precious gift they can share however they please.
But that's not all. These stories find a secure home in our archive, a treasure chest of experiences for future generations to explore. The best part? It's all a gift to the Veteran – our way of saying thank you for their service.
Tune in to the Veterans Archives Podcast, where history, heroism, and heartwarming tales come to life.
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Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
Jason Hindmarsh: A Life Shaped by Courage, Family, and Service
What if you were born into a world where discipline, bravery, and resilience were a way of life? Join us as we explore the extraordinary life of Jason Hindmarsh, whose journey from a childhood on Grand Forks Air Force Base to a fulfilling civilian career is both heartwarming and inspiring. Jason, a former member of the United States Air Force, shares vivid tales of growing up in a military family, where his sister's courage and his grandfather's unwavering work ethic molded his path. From amusing anecdotes about neighborhood adventures to poignant reflections on family life post-military, Jason's story is a testament to adaptability and the enduring spirit of service.
Throughout his military career, Jason faced trials and triumphs, weaving a tapestry of experiences that range from mastering basic training's rigorous demands to earning commendations for his work in Kuwait. His journey is filled with personal milestones, like meeting his wife Jennifer, and professional challenges, such as training the Kuwaiti military at the tender age of 20. With deployments that took him from Saudi Arabia to the Azores, and unexpected roles during the transformative events of 9/11, Jason reveals the intricacies of military life abroad and the unique set of skills honed through these experiences.
As he transitions into civilian life, Jason emphasizes the importance of community, family, and the courage to step beyond comfort zones. From his time supporting drone operations in Africa to adjusting to life in Atlanta, Jason's narrative is a rich tapestry of personal growth and impactful contributions. Listeners will find inspiration in his reflections on the lessons learned, the camaraderie found, and the strength of unity in overcoming life's challenges. Join us for an episode that captures the essence of courage, resilience, and the profound impact of a life dedicated to service.
Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday, October 8th, and we're here with Jason Hindmarsh, who served in the United States Air Force. Welcome, Jason, Thank you. So we're going to start out super simple today. If you could just tell us when and where you were born.
Speaker 2:So I was born July 10th 1976 in Grand Forks Air Force Base, one of the last few kids ever born on the base before they started pushing everybody off base. My parents, you know Ron and Sandra Hind hind marsh, and, uh, I had one sister at the time oh, okay, so you were born into the air force?
Speaker 1:yes, I was. And what are some of your earliest memories as a child?
Speaker 2:I don't remember much from when my dad was still in the air force. When I wear that fairchild, um, what I start remembering was when we were in uh, spokane, washington. My dad had gotten in the Air Force. When I was that fair child, what I start remembering was when we were in Spokane, Washington.
Speaker 2:My dad had gotten out of the military. After being over in Thailand for a year, he got out and started doing stuff there in Spokane and I remember being at our house and my sister having a cast and saving me from a neighborhood bully that was wanting ready to take the ladder over. After I was trying to grab a plum off of the plum tree, she ran over and smacked him in the head with their cast. It's a lot to unpack. Yeah, why'd your sister have a cast on her arm? I I don't remember why I had a hurt arm earlier that year and I don't remember exactly what it was for being that young. It was just the small little bits and pieces of things that I really remember. I really started remembering things when we moved to another town. I started going into school. Okay.
Speaker 1:And so your dad was in the Air Force. What did your mom do?
Speaker 2:My mom was a stay-at-home mom for a period of time. Then, after we started moving around, they realized they needed to have two jobs, so she started working retail oh okay, all right.
Speaker 1:And then, um, your dad, when your dad got out of the air force, you remember what he was doing he was being uh assets protection, so he was uh security forces or law enforcement.
Speaker 2:They were split at the time. Okay, air force um, so he's kind of still doing the same thing he had done in the military when he got out okay a lot of people do that.
Speaker 1:They, uh, they get out, they come back as a contractor. Um, I hear the pays a little bit better, the oh yeah, that's what I hear as well, so tell me a little bit about your mom, and what are some of your favorite memories of her some of the favorite things I have about my mom.
Speaker 2:You know it's just. She had a warm, caring heart, anything going on, always sit down and just listen to us kids what our problem was, help us work through it and and understand the dynamics of what was happening and how to uh move on from from what we we had experienced, and you know why we're feeling the way we're feeling. Um, like I said, my parents worked a lot, um so they're latchkey kid for the most part growing up, you know, as a lot of kids were during that timeframe, um so good memories of um family trips, you know, going out to my grandparents' place in Idaho and other places like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, um kind of the same question. What about? What about your dad when you think about him? What are some of your favorite memories?
Speaker 2:Growing up, me and my dad had a love-hate relationship. Of course I remember it differently than he always remembers it. It's always the way it is Right, yeah, so what I liked about my dad, what I loved about him, was that he instilled into me and my sibling a very great sense of responsibility and duty. You know hard work ethic.
Speaker 2:You know him, along with my grandparents. You know hard workers their whole life. I mean my grandfather in northern Idaho. He built his whole house from all the lumber and everything on his house on his property. You know, know everything was done by hand, and so I mean going up there for the summers. You know it. Get off one summer vacation no, it's summer vacation of you know learning how to um get firewood for the winter and you know do different things. But you know, beyond all, that you had great times of going fishing and everything else it was.
Speaker 1:It was enjoyable. It's got to be beautiful there too. Oh yeah, it was very beautiful yeah. So what about your sister? So you've already kind of talked about one of your favorite memories, when she clobbered the bully. Yeah, but growing up, how close in age were you?
Speaker 2:We are about. I think it's like a year and a half to two years apart from each other. Okay. So not too terribly far. Um. She joined the air force uh a couple of years before I did, and you know, you know we got along. You know normal civil rivalry, you know yeah but you know got along pretty well. Okay.
Speaker 1:Now you, you, um, but you know, got along pretty well. Okay, now, you had alluded to that when you were born. You had one sister at the time. Do you have other siblings then?
Speaker 2:No, just the two of us, me and my older sister.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, all right, and so you stayed out there for a while. So I'm sure there's a long journey back to Michigan, but is that so? Is your parents' uh from from that area, or how did you end up where you were at, or was it just because of the air force?
Speaker 2:as when I uh how I got to michigan here or washington state and stuff. Yeah, washington state when you're out west yeah, so my uh mom's parents uh ended up in Washington State after oh, you tell a long story on just her and her travels throughout life, but he worked for a long year drilling and that's where they ended up was Washington State and so went back to Washington State. Be around them and my grandparents other grandparents in Idaho- Okay.
Speaker 1:All right. So you're there with your sister. You're growing up Latchkey kids, how was school for you?
Speaker 2:I wasn't the greatest in school. I could have done a lot better. Hindsight 2020, obviously Right, but yeah, I wasn't the strongest academic scholar out there.
Speaker 1:Were you that kid where the the guidance counselor, the teacher, would tell your parents he's got great potential. He's got great potential, but you just never lived up to it.
Speaker 2:There were some that were that way. There's others that were um, especially later on in in high school, or like yeah, he's not going to do much of anything in his life. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty harsh. Yeah, it's something they talked to my parents about after we had a meeting, so they told my parents. My parents told me that afterwards I was like huh, okay.
Speaker 1:Time to prove some people wrong, exactly, you know. I think, though, that we grew up where, uh, college was really pushed or thrust on people, and if you weren't going to go to college, then you weren't going to do anything with your life. Exactly, yeah, so I, I totally get that. Did you play any sports in school?
Speaker 2:at all. I tried baseball. I did baseball when I was a lot younger, but I didn't play much of anything in high school or anything else. I did a little inline hockey as a zero-hour class. I enjoyed that. It was fun.
Speaker 1:So, other than that stellar report from your guidance counselor, is there anything that sticks out about your time in school, or anything like a good memory or just a memory?
Speaker 2:So there's a couple items so it's kind of proven people wrong. So I had joined delayed enlistment for, like, my senior year in high school. Okay.
Speaker 2:And the whole not doing good in school. All the way through to high school, you know, falling plagued me all the time. So I sat down and they're like're like hey, you're not going to graduate, you don't have enough credit hours, you failed too many classes, there's no way you can do it. I was like okay, well, I don't agree with that, there has to be some way. And they're like well, there's classes you could take. You just got to go find the teachers and allow you to do you know, ad hoc class after hours it. I was like okay. So I went around to all the teachers, talked to them all. I think my senior year. At one point in time I was doing 12 plus classes a semester just to get enough credit hours to graduate, and the after school classes were all self-paced. So if I get them knocked out, cool, come to be.
Speaker 2:In my senior year in high school I graduated that year alone with a b average. Everything else before that was like a, d, right. It was like hey, I can actually do this stuff. The bar was kind of set low. Yeah, yeah, uh. So I did all those classes, graduated um, showed the counselor hey, you were, I joined the military, came back to my girlfriend's homecoming class or dance and I came back in my uniform, wore my service uniform. She was there taking all the tickets and I was like, see, I actually am doing something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, was there an apology that came out of that?
Speaker 2:There was nothing, just kind of an odd look from her. It was like okay, eat a little crow here. Yeah, was there an apology that came out of that? There's nothing, just a kind of a odd look from her. He's like okay, eat a little crow here.
Speaker 1:Right, well, you know. So I got to ask you this question. Do you think I'm just gonna be blunt, because this is how I am? So? Do you think that you were bored? You weren't you? Clearly you're not unintelligent. So I'm just curious, like, do you think maybe you were just bored Because when you had a challenge you excelled, but when you were just cruising through you're like a D student?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could be exactly what it was. You know it really wasn't challenged, it was. You know I could pass classes by barely putting any effort in and just whatever that sounds about correct for that time frame, and then everything that's gone on since that. Get a challenge thrown in front of me. All right, I'll take it on. I don't know what I'm doing right now, but I'll figure it out, I'll make it work, make it happen.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think we'll probably learn that a lot of that came well. It was kind of in you to begin with, but it might have been developed a little bit through the military Yep. So you graduate high school. How long after graduation did you actually go to basic training?
Speaker 2:So I graduated in June and I went to basic in September. Okay, september 27th of uh 1995, I joined so you had, uh, you had your summer.
Speaker 1:Then, yep, had the summer any, any risk of not being able to go to? Let you go to no boot camp.
Speaker 2:Because of that, I made sure to behave myself during the summer. You know, yeah, I had that delayed enlistment, knew what I wanted to do. Um, funny thing is, I knew what I wanted to do back when I was in middle school. Okay, they're like. Hey, what do you want to do? Military?
Speaker 1:Didn't know what branch or what I wanted to do in military.
Speaker 2:It was just military. I want to do the money go into the military. And so, you know, fast forward, you know, decided to join the air force.
Speaker 1:Now, do you think that your uh joining the military was influenced by being in a military family and having been on been around it? I mean, I know your dad it sounds like your dad was out by the time you were older, but I mean I'm sure he talked some some about it.
Speaker 2:Well, unfortunately, it really seemed like it was a taboo type subject. Oh, because you know my dad. He had gotten out towards the end of the Vietnam era. So a lot of that you know. A lot of those individuals are shunned for their service to the military or the country and things like that, so they didn't talk about it much. I saw things of his around the house but it wasn't, you know, displayed prominently of I'm proud of this and whatnot. It was just okay.
Speaker 2:It was in a drawer underneath some stuff okay you know and I knew, my grandparents were in on both sides and they didn't talk about it much. You know as well, because it was, you know, you know, years ago for them. And there's other things I'd rather talk about, right so I mean completely opposite than really.
Speaker 1:I mean you knew people that were in, but you weren't really like immersed in this whole thing, it's just something you wanted to do. Yep, wow, that's pretty amazing. Not a lot of people in middle school uh, go from, uh, that's what they want to do, um, and then end up doing it. So talk to us a little bit about arriving at basic training. What was it like when you first stepped off that bus?
Speaker 2:It was exactly how my father said it was going to be when I told him I was going to join. He's like all right, this is how it's going to go down. You're going to go up there, you're going to show up. And he's like don't go in there with the shaved head already. Go with a basic haircut that's not too long, not not too long, not too short. I'm just trying to blend into the crowd because you really don't want to draw attention to yourself by the drill instructors, right? He's like go with a small bag with a change of clothes in it and that's all you need, and some toiletries. You don't need anything else. So that's exactly what I did. I went there, I showed up. You know they're screaming, yelling at people as normal, and you know my life growing up I was kind of used to that.
Speaker 2:You know, heart tough, love per se call it that way, so I was like, okay, do what I'm told to do when I'm told to do it you'll be fine, so there's no shock when you got off the bus. A lot of people were totally shocked Like, oh my.
Speaker 1:God, what'd I do? You didn't show up with your Gucci bags and all your clothes and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there, there was a couple of kids that came in. They, um, they, they left fairly shortly. There's a. You know they weren't prepared mentally, uh, for the challenges of it, right, so I see so now Air Force Basic is was it eight weeks, ten weeks? It's like eight or ten weeks, I can't remember. They've changed it a little bit over the time.
Speaker 1:Right, right, so how overall, then how?
Speaker 2:did basic training go for you.
Speaker 2:Basic training was pretty simple. You know, do your physical fitness, memorize the stuff in the books. You know, do your physical fitness, memorize the stuff in the books. You know your ranks and of enlisted and officers, as every branch has to learn your normal customs and courtesies. You know, do what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it, fold your clothes a specific way and all those different things is just just get it done and and understand it right and understand. You know, some people are like I don't understand why I have to fold my shirt into a six by six square. It's like, well, you, it's not, can you do it. It's like, okay, you can do it, but you can follow directions. Right, it's a, it's a task and following directions and can you follow those directions. It's not about the shirt exactly.
Speaker 1:People get wrapped up in the shirt or the or the, my personal favorite. I don't know if you guys did this, but the, the shaving cream can. Could not have any, not even a little bit of shaving right like. Yeah, it felt really stupid at the time, but then, as you go through your career, you realize this attention to detail is very important depending on what you do. So what did you sign? What did you sign up for? What was your?
Speaker 2:I actually came in open general mechanic. Okay.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people came in open general and then they throw them in any job that they wanted to put them into. I came in at least open general mechanic, so it was any mechanical career field, right. My sister was already in at least open general mechanics. So it was any mechanical career field, right. My sister was already in at that time. She was a crew chief on C-130s. So I was like that'd be cool, I can potentially be stationed with my sister and whatnot. So I put down crew chief C-130s, crew chief C-5s and then you get three choices. Last choice was power production. I was like work on generators, power plants, sounds interesting. So I put down my third choice. Typical military fashion. They give you the third choice.
Speaker 1:You're lucky you got any of the choices. To be honest with you, Right.
Speaker 2:So I got selected for power production and went through my basic training and from there I went to shepherd air force base for my follow-on training.
Speaker 1:so do they have a name for follow-on training? Like I know, the army is like ait, advanced individual training and, uh, the navy's like mos school. Do they have something like that for the air force technical school tech? School okay, that's right, because because in the air force, technician is the term that you used correct. Okay, all right, and then how long was your school? School?
Speaker 2:was. It was over the christmas and thanksgiving time frame, so it got extended a little bit.
Speaker 1:It was like eight, eight to ten weeks, okay now, did you come home after basic or did you just go right?
Speaker 2:to. I went straight to training. Okay, well, training is at wycliffe air force base texas and my air force base, texas, and so it was just right up the road. They threw us all on a bus. Yeah, off you went.
Speaker 1:Now it was was your school kind of just an extension of basic training?
Speaker 2:it started out that way because they didn't want to give you full frame of everything else you know you had to go through phases to be able able to not have to wear your uniform all the time. You can wear civilian clothes on the weekend and different things like that and you know you get to phase three. Then you get liberties off base. Okay.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure you had at least one or two of those people who tried to buck the system on that one right Tried to wear their civilian clothes when they weren't supposed to, or whatever. So anything, stick out that you remember about your, your time in in the, in training so there's a couple things.
Speaker 2:You know I wasn't always a real follower, real follower um, we uh got some, um, the white rum, a little pint of white rum, up into the dorms and take our Coke cans and pour them out halfway and fill them up and we're sitting in the dorm room and just having a rum and Coke and you know not of age, and just enjoying ourselves and just all right, we can't be stupid, just enjoy it and just don't talk about it to anybody else and everything's fine. But you know, it's the folks that uh got stupid with it and didn't, you know, keep everything within check and just, you know, made everybody and their brother know about it, got in trouble the stupid people always get caught.
Speaker 1:Yes, even the smart ones get caught sometimes, but the stupid ones always get caught for sure. So where did you go from after training? Did you come home for leave at all, or did you just go on to your next assignment? So I took leave during.
Speaker 2:Christmas at technical school, so I didn't go home after that. Okay.
Speaker 2:I went straight to my first base, well, which was in New Mexico. So for some reason the base didn't know I was coming. So the airport that services the base is over in El Paso, texas, and I'm going to El Magordo, texas, at Holloman Air Force Base, and it's about an hour drive. So I show up, there's nobody around, I'm going. Hmm, okay, let me figure out my way to the base. And I self-helped my way to the base and got on there and figured out how to get into the dormitories where I was supposed to be staying, and figured out where the unit was and walked over there the night on Monday, when I knew everybody would be working and showed up say, hey, I'm the new guy, I'm here to work, what do I need to do? And they're like oh, oh, you're here. We expected nobody. So it was a surprise to them.
Speaker 2:And they got me all signed into the unit and everything else and I'm sure they found work for you though, oh yeah, they've always found work for you, never a lack of that.
Speaker 1:I was always afraid like when I, when I ended up at a place where they weren't quite expecting me yet that I was gonna end up painting, painting rocks or something just not very much fun.
Speaker 2:They did that to the folks in technical school or basic training if they had a long layover or they were goofed up. It was like, okay, you're going to go paint those rocks over there or you're going to arrange the rocks to spell out the you know the unit's name, or something like that, the different colored rocks.
Speaker 1:But yeah never had to do that stuff. Lucky, lucky you, yeah. So how long were you at this first assignment?
Speaker 2:I was at the first assignment. I got there. We've been in 96. I was there for about three years. That three years I was there for about three years. That three years I was there. I you know, when you first come in, you X number years and you get promoted to next ranks and everything else. I was an E2 and they decided to send me off to a specialty school to get a special equipment identifier next to my career field name.
Speaker 1:So I don't want to interrupt. But so, just so I can kind of get a bigger picture. So everyone goes to basic training and they get the same training, and then you go on to your follow-on school and you kind of a 10,000 foot view of what you're going to do and then within that job field there are these specialties, right? Is that kind of how that?
Speaker 2:worked. There are specialties for specific areas, like there's a specialty for aircraft arresting systems okay, and that's really the the only big specialty out there for them is our aircraft arresting systems and in order to run a maintenance crew or anything like that on the aircraft arresting systems, you have to go to the specialty school and get qualified and certified in it and then you can run a crew and have people outrank you on the crew, but yet you're telling them what to do.
Speaker 1:That's a special kind of thing to have happen isn't it, yep, it is. You have. What is it all of? The? It's not all the authority and none of the rank or something. I can't remember what they say there's a saying that's out there. Anyway, you get to get in all the trouble Exactly, and they don't have to listen to you. Yep, that's kind of how that works.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you go to your specialty school and then you come back to that same, come back to the same unit. So every unit I was assigned to for the most part was a civil engineering unit. Okay. Responsible for maintaining the base or building a base when deployed. Okay. So went out, did that, came back, I got married at that base to my wifeennifer, so hold on, yeah how'd this happen?
Speaker 1:yeah, how do we? How do we meet jennifer jason?
Speaker 2:I. I met jennifer hapistance in high school. Okay, um, I was a, I was a senior and I was uh, it was, it was winter time, there's snow outside. I went out and grabbed a snowball and I was gonna um messing around through a snowball that was supposed to hit somebody else, but it hit her instead. Okay.
Speaker 2:And from there it just kind of came about. You know, we, uh, we rode the same bus, lived in the same neighborhood. Um, there's something she tells me, tells me about I don't remember, like, and you know, we, uh, we rode the same bus, lived in the same neighborhood. Um, there's something she tells me, tells me about I don't remember, like, you know, she would put her foot up across the highway on the bus and blocked me and I've, you know, I have to interact with her or just jump over her legs. You know something like that, right, I'm, you know, for some reason I don't remember those type of things, but she's happy to remind me that, uh-huh, things like that happened.
Speaker 2:Then, um, there's a high school dance and, um, when I was in high school, I, you know cowboy hat, shirt, boots, the whole nine yards, that's how I dressed and it was a country dance and I knew how to dance. And so all these girls are going, hey, show me how to dance, show me how to dance. And okay, okay, it ended up showing her to dance and dance with her the most part because anyone who ever grew up knows that boys don't like to dance right, exactly, and if you're the boy that likes to dance.
Speaker 1:You're, you could be popular, yep well, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we dated, uh, my most my senior year. The rest of her next year was her senior year, all that. And then, yeah, november, we got married in 96.
Speaker 1:OK, and so this is this, the same girl that you went to the dance with in uniform. Yep, ok, I just want to make sure.
Speaker 2:Same girl.
Speaker 1:OK, I want to make sure there wasn't something I was missing here. No, so it's interesting because I feel like the high school romances either go great or they crash and burn. It sounds like yours went really well, yeah, it did. So you got married and then did you stay at the same unit or did you move on?
Speaker 2:So I stayed there at that unit for about three years. And during that three years, you know, I went to the specialty course. I got deployed for the first time. After me and my wife had been married for a short period of time, my son was born there. So yeah, a lot of things in three short years, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the military. Things happen quickly. Tell me a little about your deployment. Where'd you deploy to?
Speaker 2:so the first deployment. They were changing everything up at the time they're going from three to four month deployments and so they had messed up my coding of what unit I was supposed to go to over there. Okay, so I showed up in uh prince salton airbase, saudi arabia. They look at my stuff after a couple days oh, you're not supposed to be here. Okay, where am I supposed to be? Oh, you're supposed to be over at um, I think it was uh al-yadeed. It's like okay, so armored vehicle comes over, gets me. You know, it's up armed suburban. They convoy back over. I get there and they're like, oh, you're not supposed to be here. Okay, where am I supposed to be? Oh, you're supposed to be in Kuwait. So I'm in the wrong country altogether.
Speaker 1:You're not going to get in a suburban and go there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no so they drove me back. It's kind of a theme here. Put me on a Medevac C-130, fly me up to kuwait. They lower the ramp of the aircraft and they're all right, get your bags, get off the plane. I step off the plane and they taxi away. I'm left standing on the the tarmac by myself. I'm going. Huh, I don't think they expect me here.
Speaker 1:That's a theme in your life, Jason.
Speaker 2:Exactly Showing up where they don't expect me, yeah.
Speaker 1:So when you deploy though it sounds like you deploy as an individual augmentee, then Yep, so you don't. Was it just in your job. You didn't deploy as a whole unit.
Speaker 2:So most of the deployments were individual augmentees. Very few deployments were a whole unit. Okay, I think I only went on two of those my whole time in the career in the military.
Speaker 1:Everything else was a individual augmentee okay so you stand on the tarmac, you're in kuwait, you're like crap. They're not expecting me either. This reminds me of something else. So what happens?
Speaker 2:I, I flagged down uh, the first vehicle I see and they come up say, hey, I just got dropped off, um, take me to the civil engineering unit. And they're like, okay, and threw my bags into their pickup truck they had and they drove me over there and showed up, say, hey, I'm here, here's my orders are like oh okay, yeah, you're supposed to be here awesome, I'll get somebody over here to get you and get you a room and everything else.
Speaker 2:so, um, that, uh, that deployment, um, I had, uh, let's see, it was a small, small unit there, but I was in charge of the aircraft and wrestling systems. I taught the Kuwaiti military, the fire department, how to respond for engagements with aircraft and how to run the equipment, trained the Kuwaiti engineers on how to operate them, because we were supposed to hand them over to them when we left in a couple years. So, yeah, a lot of different things there. And that's where I got my first decoration and what was that for?
Speaker 2:That was for everything I did over there during that deployment. It was an Air Force Accommodation Medal and so you know all the work I did training the people, maintaining the systems as a E3 and stepping in and helping out a lot of different other organizations on the base, on doing different things, because they're all short-staffed and it's like, all right, I don't have nothing going on. I help out, learn something new.
Speaker 2:And so that whole work ethic of I'm not going to sit around and do nothing. I want to do something. If I'm going to be here, I want to be.
Speaker 1:You know amply employed, right, right, and I don't want this to be lost to anyone. How old were you, oh?
Speaker 2:see I was. I was not now. I was 20 at that time. For that one Cause, I came back right before my 21st birthday.
Speaker 1:Right. So you're 20. I was 20. Here you are in Kuwait and you're training people on systems and you're doing things that are potentially saving people's lives. And you're 20. And you're doing a lot of it. You're doing because you just know it needs to get done. No one told you to do it. That's pretty amazing, yeah, for a guy that age to be doing that. So you were in Kuwait. I want to ask you this too when you got to Kuwait, did it seem?
Speaker 2:like you'd landed on the moon, I mean how did it feel to you when you got to Kuwait? It was different, because you could still see off in the distance the burning oil fields. Right, 96 timeframe? Mm-hmm, yeah, was it hot? Oh, it was really hot. That's when I found out what hot was. Right. It's dry heat, though. That's okay, right, jason? Oh, yeah, dry heat. Yeah, dry heat.
Speaker 1:You know what I tell people about dry heat.
Speaker 2:You know, I tell people about dry heat.
Speaker 1:Dry heat is like turn your oven on to 400 and stick your head in it yeah. And then take a hair dryer and blow dry your hair. That's dry heat, yes I don't care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hot, yeah, uh. This is when I learned that, uh, my boots can actually melt standing on asphalt. Yeah, in the sun that's, that's the truth.
Speaker 1:People don't believe that stuff, but that really, that actually happens. Yeah, it does. So you, um, you're over there for a while and you actually, so, in the short time you're there, you accomplished a lot, yep, uh. And then you, you come back home and, um, I mean, you hadn't been married for very long, so it must have been nice to get back home to your, to your wife, and uh, and so what happens?
Speaker 2:come back and you know life continues on and um, I do some other specialty items there at the base. You know just things that just kind of popped in my head and I haven't thought about in years. Um got involved with um getting trained to go out and do search and recovery for aircraft that crashed, with the pilots in them. Got trained on chemical, biological, nuclear warfare as an augmentee for that group of people. So a lot of cool training that normal people don't get.
Speaker 2:That's in power production but for some reason that's the right place, right time and he does some good training and went out and did a search and recovery on a F-16 pilot from the National Guard that went down with his plane out in the White Sands Missile Range and found parts of his body and stuff to be able to send back home to his family. Right, right, those are the things that are surreal. It's hard work, it's exhausting work, but it's work that has to get done. I'm happy to have been able to go out and do things like that to help bring things home for other people.
Speaker 1:Because you weren't going to save his life, but at least his family would be able to take care of him. Yeah, that's important, exactly, really important. So, yeah, it sounds like you don't just sit around and wait for things to happen at all. I'm surprised there's not a pararescue training in here somewhere.
Speaker 2:There's actually pararescue at the base. But yeah, I never did any of that.
Speaker 1:I'm very surprised. So how long after your return from deployment was your child born?
Speaker 2:My son was born in 98. Okay, all right, so a couple years.
Speaker 1:So it wasn't a deployment, baby. No, okay, that happens quite a bit, so, yeah, so talk to us a little bit about that. I mean, all the things that you're doing, uh, you still you have a family and uh, and you have a son. Um, what was that like for you?
Speaker 2:It was kind of one of those surreal things. You know, I really never thought about you know okay, grow up, have kids, you know stuff like that, like that. You know, I don't think guys really do that kind of stuff. No, um, of course my wife did she's like I want to have kids. Like, okay, we can afford to have kids. I'm in the military, we're living on base.
Speaker 2:You know we we're fine financially to do it also okay I have a kid and so you know, long comes my son and uh, I'm working a lot of night shifts and things like that, but enjoying every moment that I can have with them. My grandparents come up from Arizona and visit and see him before we go to our next location. But yeah, I mean great times with him as a little guy yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably some of the best memories I would imagine yeah, yeah. So you, uh, you kind of are doing your thing, and then it's time to go to your next assignment, so let's talk about that.
Speaker 2:So when I came back from that deployment, we stopped at a place called lodges field, azores, down the middle atlantic ocean, and it was nighttime, was nice. I was looking I was like, yeah, it'd be nice to be here, you know, it'd be like a pretty cool place to go. Then I can't remember if I got selected for it without putting in for it or if I put in for it, but that was my next location, lodges Field, azores. Wow, and it wasn't even your third choice Nope.
Speaker 1:So what was that like? Talk us about that. That is an awesome, awesome place to go, and this is an accompanied tour, company tour.
Speaker 2:I went there as a two-year company tour, with option to extend for a third year. So me, the wife, my son, we pack up the whole house and off we go to the azores. It's a subtropical island out in the middle atlantic ocean you if you draw a line from New York and Portugal, it's about almost right, smack dab in the middle.
Speaker 1:Is it a big place?
Speaker 2:You know, it's not that big. You could probably drive around the Island, the outskirt of it, in about an hour or so. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious, cause you know, a lot of people are like oh, I want to get stationed in Hawaii, and then they get stationed in Hawaii. Like then they get stationed in Hawaii and they're like, oh my God, hawaii's an island. It was fun for like the first six months, right? So you go to the Azores, you're going to be there for two years. It sounds like it wasn't a bad experience for you at all.
Speaker 2:No, I enjoyed it. I got involved with spearfishing to begin with, so went spearfishing to begin with, okay, so went out to the ocean, enjoyed the ocean, love seafood. My wife enjoyed you know the uh, you know the one thing about the military life, especially overseas, phenomenal um support from the other groups that are there. I mean it's a great, it's an extended family, is what it is right, and so you know we'd have, you know, dinners at different places, you know, for holidays and things like that and when it was great and so she.
Speaker 2:She had a really good support element there with all the additional spouses and whatnot, so she made a lot of good friends. Yeah, she made good friends there.
Speaker 1:Okay, what about you?
Speaker 2:yeah, I made some good friends. They're friends I'm, people I'm still friends with today.
Speaker 1:Okay all right, and so your son's not really that old at this point. He's just kind of getting around a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of my funniest memories I have of him there is Halloween. He's in a bumblebee outfit. I think I have video of this someplace. He's not going to like you for that. He's getting upset and he's having a temper tantrum and he's jumping up and down and flops on the ground and we're just watching. I was like, eh, you can have your temper tantrum, you'll be fine. And then he does it and he gets done with it and he's like okay, can we go trick-or-treating now? I kind of interesting in all honesty. So did you deploy out of the azores at all? I did, okay, where'd?
Speaker 2:you go from, I went to saudi arabia.
Speaker 1:Okay, prince salt and air based saudi arabia so you were there once, but you didn't belong there exactly. You were there for the for real this time, correct?
Speaker 2:all right, and what'd you do there? So there I was um the night shift for generator repair maintenance.
Speaker 1:Okay, Night shift is that like midnight to eight or something like that?
Speaker 2:It was a 12-hour shift, so it was like three in the I can't remember the time shift yet, but it was. Yeah, it was each shift had 12 hours, okay, so it could be seven to seven. Was a each shift have 12 hours, okay, so it could be seven to seven. I think is really roughly what it was.
Speaker 1:Okay, and how busy were you.
Speaker 2:Oh, extremely busy yeah. At night we repaired all the units run out and refilled them all all night long, did a lot of troubleshooting and repairing of stuff, got a good experience on, uh, small mechanics of engines and, well, people relied on that stuff, especially in the desert, right?
Speaker 1:yep yeah. So you were there. For how long?
Speaker 2:that was four months okay and you head back to the azores? Yep, head back to the azores afterwards. Um, actually got promoted to staff sergeant when I out there and got my line number for it.
Speaker 1:Oh, very cool. Yep, does the, does the, the air force do anything special when you get promoted like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they do. Um. So since we were over there, all of the uh stripes for people that got promoted, they do a um promotion tack on type ceremony of hey, congratulations, you got promoted, but you're gonna have to wait till inline number comes up in x number of months. Right, uh, they took all of our stripes and flew them in a uh f-15 over iraq oh, that's very cool get for it and everything else.
Speaker 2:And hey, these, these were flown over iraq and f-15, uh, this mission number whatnot? So that's pretty cool stuff oh yeah, yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1:I've never seen anything like that. I've seen them like they'll, they'll fly a flag over the state department or something, but I've never seen them fly the your insignia over. That's kind of cool, all right. So you, you come back home as a staff sergeant, right? Or you come back to the Azores.
Speaker 2:I came back to the Azores as a as a still a senior airman because, the uh because the air force they go.
Speaker 2:Okay, for the next 12 months we're going to promote x number of people each month and so the first month may be number one through 400, okay, and so you have your line number and you got to watch your p's and q's for that whole time frame till you actually get to sew it on or pin on because it's easy for them to go. Well, we're going to draw a red line through your number and you're not going to promote now. Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they don't do like some branches of service. You will get promoted on paper, you can wear the rank, but you're not officially getting paid at that rank yet yeah, frocking. Yeah, frocking, thank you. You would think I would know that from my navy days, because I was a frock d5 at one time. Um, so, yes, uh, all right. So, uh, what are you doing? What happens when you get back to the azores? What's?
Speaker 2:going back to the azores, I, I, um. So in the azores I started out working in the power plant. We had a five uh like an eight megawatt power plant down. We had a five uh like an eight megawatt power plant down there that we ran that man ran the whole, whole, whole, uh us side of the base. So I moved from there over to the other building where we um worked on generators and uh aircraft resting systems again. Okay.
Speaker 2:Um, it's where I learned that the Azores was an alternate abort site for the space shuttle. Oh. Yep. So anytime that the space shuttle took off, we would go out and take down our barrier systems off the runway in case it needed to abort there, and then, once it got past a certain spot, they'd say, okay, put them back up. And we'd put them back up.
Speaker 1:I'm learning all kinds of interesting things. So did you? So did you extend? You were there for two years I went for the third for a third year? Yep, okay. Did your wife have some impact on that, or do you just want?
Speaker 2:uh, we talked about it. We enjoyed our times there and I can't. We'll stay here for another year okay and did you deploy?
Speaker 1:again, again out of there, or, you know, stay there um.
Speaker 2:So I left there october of um, yeah, I can't remember the year. That's why I brought my notes notes are important. Yes, yeah, october of 01. I left there, okay, so shortly after september 11th. Um, so I was there in the azores when september 11th happened. That was.
Speaker 1:That was a bit surreal, yeah yeah, so talk to me about that. You know, I, um, I just I was at a, an event for consumers energy, as a matter of fact, uh, where they were talking about 9, 11 and you know, I remember up, everyone remembered where they were at when John F Kennedy got shot. That was the big thing. So what was it like for you when you saw that happen? Or were you watching it real time, or did you just hear about it?
Speaker 2:So it was lunch. My wife had left the island to go back to the States to spend some time with family and other stuff before we went to our next base. So like the last six months-ish, I was there by myself. So I went home, had lunch and I came back and I come back in and everybody's standing around the TV in the main area watching.
Speaker 1:I'm going.
Speaker 2:What's going on? Like, oh, the plane hit the trade center. I'm like what? No way. So I'm standing there watching and watching and watch the second one, watch them fall. And I was like, okay, I turned to the um yelling airman that was with me. I was like, hey, there, there's still work we need to do. We need to go and go finish doing our um monthly inspections on the generators and everything else that's outside the base and the surrounding areas. So it's like, okay, things are going to happen, but let's go. So we go off and we leave and we're off base and we're doing an hour run on this generator, make sure everything's okay on it. And then they come over the radio and they go FPCON, delta. It's like which is force protection, condition delta?
Speaker 3:the highest level you can ever get to jump from probably where you were at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and it's like, okay, well, they didn't say this exercise, so this is a real world. Um, it's like, okay, let's shut everything down and pack everything up and get, get back to base and see what's going on. So we packed everything up, drove back to base and see what's going on. So we packed everything up, drove back to base and they're like, okay, yeah, we are in Delta Height security for everything. Everybody's in split shifts, so we're not stacking up people at the gates and making sure that we're staying vigilant and watching everything going on around the more vulnerable parts of the installation, because the Azers is a major refueling hub for any aircraft going from mainland to Europe and beyond, and so you would see at any point in time, you know when they would transition aircraft back and forth. You know a bunch of F--15s, f-16s, um, different cargo airplanes all there on the runway, uh. So it was like, okay, we're gonna see an influx of aircraft and things like that. And did you? Did you see?
Speaker 1:yeah, we did, it picked up, yep okay, no, when you're there, do you live on post or on base, or do you live off base and commute?
Speaker 2:in. There's some people that lived off base. We lived on base, it was really nice housing that they had there. It's the same with any other installation around the world. You have option to be on or off base.
Speaker 1:Right, so I mean, other than heightened security and a larger than normal group of people coming in, did things change much after that? For you, not much, not much.
Speaker 2:We still did all of our normal monthly inspections because we got to make sure all the generators we had off base because we had a bunch of them off base that were for freshwater wells to send water to the base and whatnot.
Speaker 1:Right, had to make sure we water to the base and whatnot that had to make sure, we had to watch them and make sure they're operating. So, once again, I mean, people are depending on you to make, and your, your team, to get this done. So you, uh, you're there. You um, finish up your. Your tour, you've extended, now three years, is up. Where do you go from there?
Speaker 2:I go back to um cannon air force based new mexico. Go back to new mexico. Okay, so I was looking at, so they give us option of dream sheet where do you want to go from your remote assignment? And I was looking at everything that was available. I was like, well, I could go out to california, where they're having a bunch of power issues because they're having a ton of brownouts during that time frame. Or I could go to New Mexico. I don't want to deal with the brownouts because it'd be a lot more work and you know, really didn't want to go to California.
Speaker 1:So I was like okay, let's go back to New Mexico.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So basically like going home, right, yeah, but now you're you saw him. I'm assuming in that period of time you've gotten your e6 and it's on right here. Uh, did you get? Yeah?
Speaker 2:my e5 I got.
Speaker 1:Sorry, you're, e5 my e5 got.
Speaker 2:I got promoted to e5 and I so I went to the next base as e5.
Speaker 1:Okay now was there anybody there that you remember from your previous assignment, or it was just a whole new group of people, a whole?
Speaker 2:new group of people.
Speaker 1:Okay, and how was that going back there? So?
Speaker 2:funny thing is so at my first base. There was an individual there. Last name is Cunningham. He was at my first base and he showed up in the Azores.
Speaker 1:Afterward Sort of followed you around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, following me to the Azores and there was another guy that came from Holloman to the Azores as well. Follow me there. It was like a year or so after I did.
Speaker 1:They just heard that you liked it so much. Maybe, maybe, so what kind of things are you doing when you get back to New Mexico?
Speaker 2:I get back to New Mexico, the whole unit's gone. I'm showing up and there's barely anybody there because they deployed out for Afghanistan and stuff like that. Okay, and so basically I come in. I'm one of two individuals that are of the same rank, running the shop. So the higher ranking guy, he takes the day shift, I take the night shift of running maintenance crews for the aircraft arresting systems, and you know, I do that for the roughly three years I was there. Okay, during that time frame, my, do that for the roughly three years I was there. Um, during that timeframe, my first daughter is born, uh-huh. So now you have two kids. Yep, to have two kids at that time, two kids. Did you deploy out of there? Trying to remember, did I reply out of there? Yes, I did. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, I did okay, yeah, I actually went out to um algebra airbase again.
Speaker 1:Oh, this was um in 03 for the invasion into iraq. Okay, pretty much the same assignment, just a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Uh, a little bit more serious now, right, yeah, yeah, okay um, so we, yeah, so my daughter's born in, uh, yeah, in oh five, yeah, you better know, no 2002. My other, my last daughter, isn't born in oh five so 2002 she's born.
Speaker 2:You know, before we go out for oh three, uh for the invasion, and you know great times with her. I mean um a little harder on my wife, you know just um a little more uh serious. You know conditions with her on that pregnancy and a little rougher. But she came along premature and uh came out just fine as happy and good, good kid.
Speaker 1:Oh, good, yeah Good, and and so um did your wife have the same sort of uh support system in new mexico that she had nasaurs uh?
Speaker 2:no, it was a bit different being stateside because you know you're not confined to a small area and right. A lot of people lived off base and everything else that was related or in the unit with me. So her mom came down helped out. So that helped out a lot, with me working the night shifts and whatnot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so when you were deployed, how long were you? Was this another three months or did?
Speaker 2:it. We were six months on that one.
Speaker 2:Okay, we were six months on that one, okay. So we went out for the deployment and it was one of those where, hey, you're going, no, you're not, you're going, you're not. Back and forth. So many times I told my wife. I said, hey, it's going to be six months, the house is going to be here by itself. Just go ahead and go back home, spend time with your mom, my parents, whatever. And so that's what she did. She packed up before we left and said our goodbyes, and her and the kids yeah, she drove up, if I remember correctly, so she kept a car. So we finally get the go hey, you're going. So we get all our stuff, we move it out. We get to the go hey, you're going. So we get all our stuff, we move it out. We get to Dover, delaware, to the base there, and they call us and say, hey, you're, you're not going anywhere, we, you need to stop moving. Okay, whatever, you say yeah, we're in Dover. Delaware.
Speaker 2:What trouble can we get in Delaware? Yeah, so we're there for another week or so and then finally get the green light. Okay, yep, you're back on and we get from Delaware and we get into Ramstein, germany, and we get hauled up in Germany for a while. So we help out there wherever we can, because we're a civil engineering unit. This is the time when I did deploy with. The whole unit went.
Speaker 2:So we had everything from power generation, plumbing, electrical, hvac, um, horizontal, vertical construction, you name it to build a city. We had the skills. So they were bringing in a bunch of german soldiers to help fortify ramstein a little bit more, and so we built a huge tent city for them, which helped out a lot. Yeah, um, we, uh, there is, they're expecting a bunch of uh medevacs and casvacs to come back to rammstein, and so we went out into the airfield and built a bunch of stuff for the uh medical unit that was there for them to be able to bring people off the planes and triage them real quick and right where they're going to go and whatnot I think they knew this was going to be different from the original.
Speaker 1:Yes, kuwait invasion right this wasn't, people were going to drop their weapons and surrender at the extent that they did that first exactly yeah, so that's pretty smart. So how long were you in Ramstein then?
Speaker 2:We were there for two to three weeks, okay, and then we finally got the word. And then we got into Kuwait, replaced a National Guard unit that was there and, you know, spent six months there, there, and we um. I was there long enough to um, where I worked with the power plant, I worked with the right aircraft resting systems, and then they started doing convoys up to um talil airbase in iraq yeah, we started moving supplies and everything else and they're like okay, well, we're gonna um, decommission al-jber here, but we need to pack up everything that's here and move it up to Toledo.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, me being who I am, I just like all right, what do we need to do? Well, we need to take that structure down. Cool, I'm on it Down, it comes, yep Down, it comes. Palatize the whole thing. And they better mean it, right, exactly. So we bring it, we tear down a bunch of different stuff on the base and we palatize everything and we send them off. We send off generators that we we don't need anymore. Uh, cause they're? They're trying to build a whole base out there in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, so do that.
Speaker 2:There was a posting that came up and my boss was like, hey, you might be really good for this, and it was a instructor position at Fort Dix, new Jersey. Okay. It was a special duty assignment, so he had to apply for it. Apply, didn't hear anything, come back, and then, a couple of months after being back, lo and behold, hey, you have orders to Fort Dix.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, now is this an accompanied tour, yep.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, accompanied tour. Okay. So you head up to Fort Dix, New Jersey. Now, what year would this be? I'm not trying to quiz you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it would have been December of 03. Okay, yep, all right. Just shortly Like, like I said, two months after I came back from that deployment in, oh three off, we were to a Fort Dix. And how long were you there? I was there. I was assigned to Fort Dix for four years. Only spent three years there.
Speaker 1:Okay, All right. Do you remember like approximately when you would have left Fort Dix?
Speaker 2:That would have been December of oh seven.
Speaker 1:So you were at Fort Dix when I was at four days. Okay. We came through. There is our for our three months. I don't know what the hell. They called it Train up or whatever. They put us in those barracks that were condemned.
Speaker 2:Oh, those barracks. Yeah, I know those barracks.
Speaker 1:So we were there at the same time.
Speaker 2:That's interesting so what were you instructing there? So I was part of the 421st combat training squadron.
Speaker 2:It was a mostly managed and ran by security forces, but we were brought in to stand up a new flag level exercise. So the air force has um silver flag and they had um this other one I can't name of his drawing escaping me right now eagle flag. That's what it was. Okay, so silver flag was just civil engineering alone by by themselves. Eagle flag since they found out from the invasion into iraq. Hey, we have shortfalls with our interoperability amongst our own people within the Air Force and we need to get better at this force deployment packaging. That we've said that we're going to do. So that's what we set up, the Eagle Flag.
Speaker 2:And so we brought in people from a group called TALC who go out and stand up a steer air base after you know, say, the Rangers jump in and secure a base, or you know, somebody else secures the base and they set up a basic airfield and start bringing in cargo. And as they bring in the cargo, that's when the civil engineering and everybody else comes in along with that and starts building out the base from there. Okay, so it was an exercise, large-scale exercise, about to about five to eight thousand people. Wow, that's huge. First time that we did it. Um, and we did full blown up. Hey, send your cargo here that you palletize and we'll manifest it, put planes and then send it over. And they actually brought in planes at the airfield there at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, because I was stationed at Fort Tix, lived on McGuire but worked at Lakehurst.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, sounds about right, right, right, you were supposed to be at one of them. Yeah, exactly For sure.
Speaker 2:So we're out there and three years of hard, hard training I mean any unit that was going to deploy out to Iraq came through us yeah, air Force-wise and a lot of training on our own side. It was really hard on the family, extremely hard on the family. That's a lot of long hours, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean there's plenty of times it was, you know, 14 to 18 hours of just, you know, 14 hours out in the field in the hour and a half drive back home, you know a half time wondering am I gonna fall asleep behind the wheel or everything gonna be good you may as well have been deployed yep for all intents and purposes, exactly. And that's one thing I talked to my wife about, and during that time we had great times. I mean, New Jersey is phenomenal, it's beautiful. There's a reason why they call it the Garden State. I believe it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think people realize that. I mean, it really is amazing and I believe the Bill of Rights was signed in Perth Amboy, new Jersey.
Speaker 2:Might be. I don't remember, but I don't know. They have the Liberty bill right across the river there in Pennsylvania, philadelphia, philadelphia, there you go.
Speaker 1:So I mean, there's a lot, there's lots to do when you, when you have the time and and it sounds like you made the time to try and enjoy some of it yeah, man, it made enough time to also have our had the time, and it sounds like you made the time to at least try and enjoy some of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, made enough time to also have our third child there. Yes, so boy or girl, girl.
Speaker 1:Oh, two girls and a boy.
Speaker 2:So my oldest is my son's Jarrett. Middle daughter is Jaden. My youngest is Janae and she was born there in New Jersey in 2005. Okay. So they're all grown up now? Oh yeah, they're all grown up. The uh two are out of the house.
Speaker 1:The third one's still going to college right now yeah, it's amazing how life does that, oh yeah, so so I want to kind of go back to what you were talking about. When you, uh, first we going to have your first child, you said it was kind of surreal because you know, your wife kind of grew up with this whole I want to have children thing and you grew up with, oh okay, whatever. And so you have children and now they're grown up, you've got one left in college who will graduate and go off and do amazing things. I'm sure, looking back kind of reflecting on that amazing things, I'm sure, looking back, kind of reflecting on that, how has that changed you as a person? I'm struggling with how to ask this question because I remember myself and your story kind of sounds like mine, because I remember my wife was like oh, let's have a baby.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh okay, yeah, we'll have a baby, I'm going to continue to do what I'm doing. We're going to have a baby. When those kids come, they change how you view things.
Speaker 2:They kind of change your life and, um, they become important yeah, I mean it changed my thought process of I'm not doing the stuff I'm doing in the military in in other parts of my life or for me it's what can I now do for the betterment of me, in order to be able to support, and for the betterment of them when they get older? So it changed the like you said. It changes the mindset and how you cognitively think about stuff. It's no longer you.
Speaker 1:Correct, it's no longer you. Correct, it's a collective right, yes. So you're at Fort Dix, you have the, the, the third baby, your daughter, who I'm assuming is the one you're talking about Still in college, yep, still in college, yep.
Speaker 2:And to the three. Well, like I said I was. I was officially assigned to there for four years, but I only spent three years there okay, so what happened.
Speaker 2:Well, like you said, um, foreshadowing is always a thing right right you know, the opportunity came up for me to um leave the unit there to be able to get out of it, because it was a unit that once you're assigned to it, unless you do something drastic, if you're a good enough asset to them, they're not going to let you go. Yeah, there was um a air force, uh, independent medical technician, idmt, that was there and they're like yeah, you're too good, we're not going to allow you to leave the unit period, so you have to do extreme measures to force the hand right. So went back home say hey, hon, there's, there's this um thing I could do. The time frame I've been been here I use the exact words that you just you said a little bit ago it's like I've been deployed this whole time, right backwards that you just you said a little bit ago, it's like I've been deployed this whole time.
Speaker 2:Right, I come home, I may or may not see you. You're asleep, I get up and leave. Before you're up, I don't. I see you guys on the weekends unless they say, hey, there's mandatory training for us on the weekends, so it's you know. Do you want me to put in for this? It's my way out of the unit, and she's like sure. Um and so I, I uh, volunteered for a one year remote tour to Iraq and better, with the Iraqi army.
Speaker 1:That's a hell of a way to get out of New Jersey. Yep, wow, I mean that's out of the frying pan into the fire, really, yep, yep.
Speaker 2:Um, out of the frying pan into the fire, really, yeah, yeah, um. So I applied for it. Um, there was really no way I was selected. There was no way the command can deny it right, turn it down. So it was my way of I come back. I go on this one year deployment. I get a guaranteed follow-on location of my choosing. The air force said you choose where you want to go, we don't care if it's overmanned, we're sending you. So I did that. Um, so it was uh, one of the best places I could have deployed to iraq for the year out of was Fort Dix, because I had been spent three years training people on small unit tactics, reaction to fire, convoy operations, you know all these different things that I knew I was going to be using over there. Yeah, uh, so it was uh a good place to deploy from for that year deployment.
Speaker 1:So we got the from. Let's talk about the two. Where'd you go?
Speaker 2:So I went to Taji Air Base, or Taji, iraq. Okay. Embedded with the Iraqi Army, part of a multinational corps, Iraq in Sticky. I was part of a garrison support unit. They had a regional support unit there. It was 12 people total. We were completely embedded with them. We lived on that side of the base with them. Every once in a while we'd go over and eat at the dining facility with them. We had interpreters with us. I tell people it was the best and worst deployment of my life.
Speaker 1:Is it one of those things where you're really glad that you did it, but you wouldn't do it again, kind of thing? I wouldn't do it again.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right, I met some people there that were phenomenal people, great people, some of the interpreters, great people, some experiences that you know they're not the funnest things in the world to have or to see or do, but it shaped, it's shaped me into who I am, right. So what did you do? What did you do when you were?
Speaker 1:there. So, I went over there.
Speaker 2:I was supposed to be power generation. Okay. But I showed up and then they're like hey, we need somebody to run the tactical operations center, which is normally manned by a senior nco. At the time I was just a e5. I had line number four, e6 and I had no officer.
Speaker 2:So it was just I was running the whole show. So I get in there, I sit down. It's like, okay's not my job, but I know how to do this, I can figure it out. So, all right, where's our standard operating procedures for all this stuff that we're supposed to be doing in here? They had nothing. Okay, we're going to establish some.
Speaker 2:So I created some checklist for everything you know and start doing all these different stuff there. So I went from. I did that for about well, that and other things. For about the first six months I did. You know, besides the tech operation center, I ran all the commo and crypto stuff for the unit, helped plan some convoys for the unit, took care of the base fuel for the Iraqi side, helped train some of their people on the generators that they had and stuff like that. And, you know, did all that stuff and went home for my two weeks R&R Six months, or from a year you get two weeks back to the states and then you get two, four days back to a um rnr place over in um um did you guys go to cutter?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think it was cutter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what was that? Two weeks like being home because you knew you were gonna go back it coming back, it was like in a different world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't, I didn't drive um. You know the, the whole hyper vigilance and everything else. It was there yeah we're coming back and my wife's driving down the road and I see a cardboard box alongside the road. Then, like towards the end of the time, there, my wife's like oh that's new. I haven't seen that and I was like no, I saw that day one. It's been there for two weeks now, Along with this and that.
Speaker 1:Start pointing out everything oh yeah, and you're sweating as you drive by it, because you don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2:Yep. So we um did the two weeks I go back over there and um, our uh base defense unit that was training the um security forces on the base left. And so I was like, okay, we still need to have some sort of presence with them, right. And so from my experience and training, it's like, okay, I'm going to pick up that mantle now, like, okay, I'm gonna pick up that mantle now. So now I have the talk. Commo um also got part of um. Um, whenever dignitaries showed up, I ran their schedule for them you're like a battalion commander at this point, honestly yeah, how it looks like so did uh you know the the manifest for their them going around.
Speaker 2:There's a couple of people we did personal security detail for because they didn't have enough people Come back and then I'm doing that base defense detail as well and responding to all attacks on the base rocket. You know indirect, direct running convoys, now Anything and everything to stay busy and we made some really great people there. One guy I went to his wedding after we came back and you know I had him do my retirement.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, that's a good friend right there yeah yeah, so that that year there we get, get it all wrapped up. You know, luckily we didn't lose anybody.
Speaker 1:We came really close a couple times to losing people well, let me ask you this question, then, because you know you, you were actually in a position of leadership that well, for the for lack of a better way you weren't supposed to be in, like it, found you right, yes, and so you're making a lot of these decisions, and when we talk about people, you didn't lose anybody. You brought everybody home, but you're making decisions on a daily basis that impact the lives of lots and lots and lots of people. What was that like for you?
Speaker 2:being that young um lower ranking young young ranking individual right and actually being fairly young. I don't think I was in my 30s, I was still in my 20s. I want to say actually being fairly young. I don't think I was in my thirties, I was still in my twenties. I want to say I could be off my timeframe, but it's um, it's, it's surreal. You step back and you look at it, um, granted, we didn't lose any us forces, but there's decisions I made that caused Iraqi soldiers to lose their lives. Right.
Speaker 2:You know cause, you know being in the talk and they're getting attacked on the Iraqi side of the base. We have nobody from the US side coming over to help us. So it's needed to know pertinent information so I can ensure the proper size response force responds to what's going on and that they're not all going to get overwhelmed and killed. So there's two times where um two or three iraqi soldiers got injured and a couple got killed. From the decisions I I made, which it's it's at the moment, at the time I did it it was hard, but over years now of processing and thinking about it and going, would I have made a different choice? No, I would have never made a different choice. It would have been the same decision because it was an appropriate decision to make.
Speaker 2:Right and it was just an unfortunate circumstance that happened.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that too, that over time, you start to realize that, um, that, yes, people were either injured or killed as a result of some decision-making. That happened, but they weren't killed because of you. Does that make sense? Makes sense, yeah, yeah, like. And the other thing is that, yes, somebody got hurt, but how many people didn't get hurt because you made the right decision? Right? That's a hard one. I mean, like, nobody wants to be in that, in those shoes, especially someone who's really kind of junior, still junior, enlisted at this point.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, we. Um. We had a level three clinic on that side of the base. We had two bombings from terrorists on the civilian populace that we brought a bunch of the civilians onto the base, brought them into our medical or clinical area and then I spent at least a couple hours on the radio just calling medevacs. At least a couple hours on the radio just calling medevacs. That's another thing. Being in the talk, any medevac that needed to happen from our side of the base went through me or the person that was standing there. If the person that was in there because I can't be there 24-7, obviously If they were having an issue any time of day or night, they would call me and then I would hightail it over there, take over and call the medevac in.
Speaker 1:So there's quite a few medevacs. I called in over that time frame, so you know that nine line backwards and forwards, I'd imagine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've forgotten a few of the stuff over there. I know there's, you know. First five lines are the most important to get the bird flying right, right, yeah, you can figure it out after that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we, yeah, we. Um, we didn't have medevac, we, we can only Kazovac, because we were right in the city where I was at. So, um, we never did a nine line medevac, we just had to put them on a vehicle and bring them back to the the cash and get them dealt with. But, um, so, how was? How was it coming back? I've heard people say, I've heard the phrase the people that leave aren't the same people that come home.
Speaker 2:I would say that's correct.
Speaker 1:So what was it like coming home after?
Speaker 2:all that. So I came back and the unit. I came back and I had to go back to the warfare center, the combat training squadron, and they're like, hey, we have this exercise going on, you need to go out to the field and be part of this and evaluate.
Speaker 2:I was like no, I told the commander. I'm like no, I'm not doing it. I spent a year doing all that stuff. I'm not going out there. I will sit in a classroom, I will talk to people, I will give them my experience, my knowledge, background, everything, and we'll go from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah and he was good with that, yeah, they were good with that. Yeah, um, they wanted to keep me um a little longer than what they originally were talking to allow me to stay there. It's like, look, my whole family's gone. My all my household goods are moved and packed up and sent on to my next location. I have nothing here, except for what's in the bags that I brought back with me from iraq. Right, that's it.
Speaker 2:Um, and that was another thing. That, uh, you know common theme that I showed up back to the airport. Uh, I was in contact with the unit, say, hey, this is the one date I daytime coming back. I need somebody there to pick me up, can you please arrange something? Showed up, nobody was around. So walked down to the rental car place and I need a rental car please. Right, had no place to stay. This guy I'd befriended before I left. I was like, well, I hope he's home. So I drive the rental car down the road, went past the auto body shop and about wrecked the car because they started to use an impact wrench as I went by and just swerve off the road and come back on.
Speaker 2:It's like okay, just relax, everything's okay. Show up at his door, knock on the doors hey man, I'm back. I need a place to stay and he goes. Not a problem, come on in brother. I got you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's something, too, that people who are in the military may or may not understand. Is that level of brotherhood Because that may have been someone that you'd only met briefly that would still do that for you because you're wearing the same uniform.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, I didn't know him for very long before I went out for my year deployment Right. I stayed with him for like two weeks before I left and then about a month after I came back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how long did you stay with him to get settled, to figure out what you were going to do?
Speaker 2:It was. It was about a month of total. I was there with him. Okay. Um, I didn't have a car, so he has my ride to and from work.
Speaker 1:Well, so how long were you? How long were you there before you went on to be with your family? A month, a month before I went.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, they wanted to keep me there for four months total. Oh. And I fought it, went to the chaplain, said hey, this is a no-go thing, that need to get this corrected and allow me to move on and be with my family.
Speaker 2:And they worked it out, it's like, okay, we'll release you early and whatnot, and they still didn't understand the new leader that was there. It's like, so you would have rather have deployed for a whole year, being away from your family, not been around them, see them, or anything like that for a whole year, versus being here with them for that same year. It's like, yes, because about the same, even though I might have been able to lay in the same bed with them, look at them when they're asleep, but there was no interaction. There was nothing.
Speaker 1:No, quality of life Exactly With that. So when you took this deal, you were able to kind of determine where you were going to go next. So where'd you go next?
Speaker 2:I went to Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington. Okay. It was back home. That's where my wife was, that's Washington. Spokane is where the base was at, so it was kind of like going back home. I figured it was a good spot to go. Some support elements there. My parents had already moved out to Utah by that time, but her parents were there and so I was like, okay, it'd be a good spot to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just about perfect. Yep, all right, so you, the wife and three children all go to washington? Yeah, so let's talk about that.
Speaker 2:The wife and three kids were there in washington already and I just kind of met up with them there. We had arranged for them to get a house on base. During my two weeks I was back in the states so I show up, they pick me up at the airport. You know normal welcome home, homecoming stuff. You know excited to see everybody and um, just kind of fell back into try to fall back into a normal life right which life isn't really normal after you know being gone for so long and you know the whole integration process.
Speaker 2:The unit I went to phenomenal. I showed up, signed in and they're like hey, go away, Go spend time with your family. Take two weeks Wow Uncharged leave. Go and integrate with your family. Take two weeks, wow, uncharged leave. Go and integrate with your family again. Did you find that pretty helpful? It did. I didn't expect it. Yeah, I was kind of flabbergasted by it. I was like I just showed up, it's supposed to be working Right. Did you show back up?
Speaker 1:home and your wife was like did you get fired? What happened? I home home and your wife was like did you get fired? What happened I?
Speaker 2:came home and told her what's going on. She's like, oh, that's cool so you know we spent, you know, two weeks just hanging out with the family and, you know, going and doing different things around the area. Just, you know, trying to normalize a little bit.
Speaker 1:So did you have the the typical kind of reintegration where, um, your wife had been used to kind of running the show and then you showed up and you're used to running the show?
Speaker 2:How did you work through that? Yeah, so that exactly was how it went down and you know it slowly works itself out and you know try to step in and do stuff and then try to have to remember like, hey, but you haven't been here that long, you just got to let things, you know, play out. It's hard, it really is hard, and it caused a lot of rifts in families coming back and having that, that head butting between the two parents.
Speaker 1:Well, and on either side it's not side, it's not a malicious thing either. No it's not. You're a guy who gets stuff done and you come home and now there's not a lot of stuff to get done, right, yeah? So you're looking for stuff to do and it's probably driving her a little crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it probably was. Yeah, she never said anything, but I'm pretty sure we're crazy. Well, she, you're wearing a wedding ring I'm assuming still still married.
Speaker 1:I'm assuming that this is this is all worked out well.
Speaker 2:Yes, what was it like seeing the kids again so my wife didn't tell my kids I was coming home.
Speaker 2:Oh so my uh she picks me up at the airport. I see my two daughters, my son's still in school and we go to the school and they call him out of school early and say, hey, your mom's here to pick you up, get your stuff. And I'm just kind of standing there and open the door. He sees me just deadbolt running, jumps into my arms and just hug him. And you know all the staff members in the office they're all you know tearing up and everything else, because you know on the base they had um uh, schools on the base all the way up through middle school and high schools off base.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, that's. Uh, that's had to be pretty emotional years, a long time in kid time.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and it was. It was really hard on my son cause, uh, he stayed with his mother or his grandmother. Uh, for the first little bit, the first half of the year, my wife stayed with her mom. There was kids at school that you know. This young girl was going through some stuff herself but she's like I hope your dad dies over there and stuff like that it was. It was rough on him, um, but you know he he got through it and you'll understand, you know, started to understand that, hey, she's probably had some issues and and some hard stuff herself that she's going through and so she's just doesn't know how to express herself and is lashing out. Right.
Speaker 2:You know my, my youngest one. She was like you know they pray every night. She would go, you know she'd pray to God. Hey, please protect my dad from my rock, cause it was like your dad's in iraq, right, and she was thinking I rock. So you know little funny things like that. My wife told me about when I came back. Wow, you gotta love kids, yeah, yeah, because I mean the youngest one. She was a year old when I left. Oh, because I had a three months train up before the deployment.
Speaker 2:Okay, so she did a lot of growing during that year yeah, yeah, you almost come home to a different kid, right she's you know, two years old, kind of talking a bit and walking around and just, yeah, a completely different kid, but still remembered who dad was and everything else.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, that's, that's good so you, you, you're home and fortunately it was like this two week to kind of start trying to reintegrate and then you come back to to work. Um, what was it like there?
Speaker 2:Uh, work was, work was normal. I mean it's it's power production generations. You know I run in the shop now I have a civilian there that's working it with me, um, but but a bunch of good guys there. I mean a lot of um, a lot of knowledge and experience from the different places I've been around the world and in different experience.
Speaker 1:You know situations I've been in to help them out through different stuff so, reflecting, reflecting back on that, you know it's funny no matter where you go like civilian, world, military, whatever, you know, you're the new guy there and you hear the old guys talk and you take as much wisdom as you can. But sometimes you kind of giggle because you're like, oh, the old guy. And then here you are, you're the old guy, now right, and so you're imparting that wisdom. Did it? Did it make you think differently about that old guy that was at the shop before?
Speaker 2:it's a good question? I'm not sure. Um, I I don't think so, because growing up the whole whole time I always learned to respect my elders and everything else and listen to what they have to say, because dad and grandparents they always like hey, fish story, the fish was probably only like six inches long, but they're going to talk like it's a foot and a half. Oh yeah, six inches long, but they're going to talk like as a foot and a half. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So there's some stuff in there that's like, eh, it's, it's nonsense, but there's, there's pearls of wisdom in a lot of the different stuff, and so this is what I would I would listen to the old guys when I was there, and you know they try to explain something to me and just try to understand it and no, uh, and figure out what they're trying to teach me on it.
Speaker 1:You think that helped you be successful.
Speaker 2:I'm sure it did. Approaching it from that direction and also the lot of time I spent as an instructor in the service. We touched base on it when I was at Fort Dix, when I was instructing people on different stuff but having to be able to understand how different people understand and learn things, it allowed me to have a little more patience.
Speaker 1:Well. So this kind of brings up a question for me is as you're instructing and you're learning, people have different ways of learning. Some people are hands-on and some people like written instruction or verbal instruction or whatever. When that carries over into how you run your shop, did you find yourself figuring out how people were and then kind of meeting them where they were at?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, kind of meeting them where they were at yeah, okay, and also the whole thing about whether you're in the military or civilian world. You just got to understand your people. What drives your people and a lot of my folks that were in the military. They enjoyed their time off. That's easy to help out when you're the shop boss. Come Friday afternoon, hey, are all the things done that need to be done? Trucks cleaned, garbage taken out, shops cleaned up, all that stuff Cool, it's all done. It's lunchtime. Everybody that's not on call, get out of here and go home. The 2PL on call. Sorry, it'll be your turn next week.
Speaker 1:Right, it is what it is. Yeah, right, some of it is taking that risk and letting people go too right. Taking that risk and letting people go to right, like letting them do what you need to let them do, cause someone may ask the question. You're going to have to answer it Right, like who gave you permission to do that? Well, I did.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's a great thing about the, the air forces, that when we went out with the uh attached with the army and everything else, they're like you show up at a place like where's your commanding officer at? We have no commanding officer with us. I'm the ranking enlisted person. I am the person for our whole group. Our commander is back at our main base. Right, you want to talk to him?
Speaker 2:there's a phone pick up a radio, but I'm I am the person here that will be interacting with you and talking with you about the whole project or whatever we were doing.
Speaker 1:Right, right, which has probably helped you since you've left the military. So how long were you in Washington then?
Speaker 2:I was in Washington until for about another three. Every place I was at for I was at for two and a half to three years. Okay, so roughly another three years, uh huh. Um, yeah, during that time in Washington we deployed again, went back to Iraq and better with another army unit. That time I was with the 555th Engineering Brigade. And how long were you there? I was there for six months again. Okay.
Speaker 2:And we built bases for the army. They're during the time frame of their drawdown. They're moving everybody from their remote locations back in and everything else. So, yeah, we're building new bases for them they come up and like man, this place is like a taj mahal. It's like you're going to build it to the air force standards and what we want.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right because I, you know, we had air force uh folks come with us and they were a little shocked about the living conditions. Um, and it's, it's just, it's just the way it is. I mean, different services do different things for different reasons, and it was all good, we all got along. But yeah, yeah, I remember there was some culture shock when I went and worked with other uh outfits as well. Um, so, on this deployment, though, you got to actually like kind of do what what your job is and not all this other stuff, right, or did you still?
Speaker 2:find a way to do other things yeah, so I was the only power pro guy there um and so to stay busy because there wasn't a lot of power pro work, I was like, okay, I'll go work with the electricians, I'll go work with the hvac you know the plumbers, because I know some plumbing stuff and it was good doing that because there's a lot of younger individuals on the hvac side that had issues troubleshooting equipment and things like that. But that's bread and butter for me on the power production side troubleshooting equipment, acdc, fundamentals, you know all that stuff. Like, okay, how is this supposed to work? And walking them through discovery on what was actually wrong with the piece of equipment. So doing that stuff and my primary job and you know it was a good one.
Speaker 1:It was good, good deployment good so you, you do your six months. Um, your family's kind of used to this routine by now. Right, yeah, so you come home. It's still great to be home, but it's not the same as like that first time.
Speaker 2:No, it's not. It's different because you know, like you said, they're getting used to it. Yeah yeah, dad comes and goes, he works odd hours and you know they will still do the phone calls. You know the morale calls and everything else. Right.
Speaker 1:So you come back and then, so what happens from there?
Speaker 2:So one thing I forgot about earlier is I. So after I came back from Iraq for that year I was there and we had put in our awards and decorations. I'm waiting on mine, waiting on mine. It's like eight months afterwards. I'm like that's a long time. Something's going on. What did it get lost? So I call up back to the folks back in iraq because I hey, what's? What's going on? Like, oh, everything's fine, not a problem, we're just doing something with it. I was was like okay, you got to explain.
Speaker 1:What do you mean? Doing something.
Speaker 2:Come to find out, they took my awards package because we were all put in for defense military service medals, right. Then mine got in there. Can't remember the captain's name, but he found it, he saw it. He's like look, this isn't right, something's wrong here, and he ran it up to General Dubik that was in charge at the time he goes. Hey, sir, recommend um a change, upgrade. And so they change it from the defense to a bronze star wow, that's quite an honor, yeah it was.
Speaker 2:I was really, um, shocked and surprised at it, because here I am at a e6 right and it brought stars. Like this doesn't happen, no, no, they don't give those out like candy, no. And it just came down to I was willing to do whatever needed to be done and and all those different hats I had on at the time right, which is which you know in the.
Speaker 1:In a short time that we've been sitting here talking, I get that like from you that that's that's who you are and, um, you know to be rewarded for who you are.
Speaker 2:That's pretty awesome, because you weren't doing it for the model no, I was doing it because it was a job that needed to be done right, somebody had to do it yeah, and there's a difference in the people that do it for the metal.
Speaker 1:Oh, there is. We've all met them. Yes, we have. Well, I'm glad that you shared that, because I think that's an important part of your story and um and so let's, let's move forward then. So you're, you're, uh, you're back from your six month deployment and um, where do you go from?
Speaker 2:there. From there I find out I have a line number for E7. Wow, so I get my line number. I start thinking about okay, what do I want to do next? And another position opens up, for an instructor position at Silver Flag in Germany.
Speaker 1:So I applied for it and I got that position and we all head off and head to a great European trip, a three-year European vacation.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, going with the theme, right, yeah, so talk to me about that.
Speaker 1:The kids and the wife must have loved it. Yeah, they were all fairly young when we went, yeah, so talk to me about that the kid, the kids and the wife must've loved it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were um all fairly young when we went. Yeah, um, they enjoyed going to. My wife enjoyed going to Germany more than the Azores. Yeah, um, it's a bigger place. It was a bigger place. Plus, she was a little more um seasoned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, see, she was a little more seasoned. Yeah, see, I call it season. Yeah, and that's a good word for a season.
Speaker 2:You know in in the ways of you know the military life and everything. She was with me for 19 out of the 20 years military and so going to Germany that's getting closer towards the end of my time in the military Right.
Speaker 1:So we go there, we, I get into the unit and um start doing my training thing. I don't want to interrupt you. Were they expecting you this?
Speaker 2:time. Yes, they were expecting me this time, wondering like like did you show up?
Speaker 1:and they're like, oh, hey, you're not supposed to be here.
Speaker 2:Like oh for crying out loud yeah, they're expecting me this time, which is good, yeah yep, so I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:So you get there and uh, and how's that go?
Speaker 2:uh, it goes great. I mean I get into it. We start doing all of our flag level exercise training and you know going through um different things that we need to go through as a training unit.
Speaker 2:You know all the safety stuff and everything else and pulling stuff that I picked up from the army and you know we just hit the ground running and have a great time I mean, one of the worst snow storms germany had during that time frame happened when we showed up and we found our house and driving up this one lane road, that where the cars have just driven and plowed the snow down to the height, to the bottom of the vehicles Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Germany is different from the United States when it comes to like how the roads are right, oh yeah, how everything's set up. It's an old, old country, yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, driving on a lot of cobblestone roads and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds like a lot of fun, though, oh, it was a blast.
Speaker 2:So I did, yeah, roughly three years there. Uh-huh, um started out in the training side of it. Then they had an issue over on the um, another side, for the aircraft arresting system. So which was the for the command level. So all, all of europe, in part of um, centcom right, was their responsibility. So I go in over there for like the last eight months of my time there and, you know, try to help fix the issues and problems. Of course, yep, exactly Um, and during my timeframe there, you know it, just as with everything else, I, I, uh did. You know Germany came out of their um stuff from world war ii where they couldn't have any deployable forces, offensive deployable forces, and so we got a call say, hey, can you teach them the mobile aircraft arresting systems that we have sold them?
Speaker 2:sure went out to uh, northern germany up by humberg, I believe it was, and spent two weeks with their training group, their primary instructors and the officers they had and taught them. The whole system, helped them with. All the manuals were declassified, they're able to give them. They help them with the translations, and ran them through the whole course when installing it and breaking one down and using it and everything.
Speaker 1:So did that and then so when I when I think about that, when I think about when you talk about that and some of the other things you've done to train even people, um, does it, does it law? It's not lost on you that the stuff that you did is like that's life changing for them. Like they're, they may not still be using those same systems with the principles that you taught them in that two weeks that you were with them, in the six months that you were with other people, or the one year that you were with, all that stuff that you taught them stuck with them for the rest of their lives. You changed people's lives and the stuff that you did. And every time you get into one of these situations where you're doing that it's not even part of your job, it's like, oh, they need that, I'm going to go do it. And you do it. And I just wonder if you realize that. You know this is like one of those um, what's the name of that Christmas movie? Um, with Jimmy Stewart it's a wonderful life yeah.
Speaker 1:So so Jimmy Stewart wanders around his whole life, doesn't realize what an impact he's had on all these people until until, you know, he jumps off the bridge Right. So I think it's important for people to have that. It's a wonderful life moment before they jump off a bridge, Like the stuff you did matter. The stuff you did impacted people for the rest of their lives. And you you talk about like, oh, I just went and did this. I just went and did that because that's who you are, but recognize that that that stuff does, let it does stick with people. I remember having instructors similar to you and I in those lessons that they taught me. Yeah, it was basic electronics, for instance, Um, and, and the stuff that they taught me is like so outdated now, but the principles they taught me in in the things they taught me about being a good human being, stuck with me my whole life. I think you're kind of that kind of person, Thank you. Do you ever think about that? Probably not, Cause that's not who you are In fleeting moments I do yeah.
Speaker 1:And, but it's like, it's just, it's. It's what I, it's what I do, it's who I am. Yeah, yeah, and it's. We need people like that, no matter where you go. So you're in Germany. Didn't mean to get all emotional there, but so you're in Germany. It sounds like you're having the time of your life over there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, enjoying it and loving life. Yeah, before I went over to the aircraft arresting side of it the last six months, they were like, hey, need you to go on deployment? Like I'm in an instructor billet, I'm not supposed to be deploying, it's like we know, but you're needed. Okay, where am I going? You're going to Africa. We're in Africa. Don't know if we could tell you. Okay, um, how long? Don't know, can't tell you. Okay, well, what can you tell me? What am I doing there? How about that? They're like you are going to undisclosed location, africa, to do an undisclosed mission to support undisclosed individuals For an undisclosed period of time. Exactly, it's like, okay, am I going in uniform or am I going in civilian clothes? Civilian clothes? Okay, I'll get me my civilian clothing allowance. I'll go buy all the clothes I need to get. Then we'll go from there. No, we get all geared up. You know me and a few other folks, and well, I was the only one from that unit that went.
Speaker 2:And I went with a couple other individuals from a different area and we were there for two weeks and then, you know, president Obama gets on the TV and goes we have troops in XYZ locations.
Speaker 1:I'm like that's exactly where we're at. I want to back up. Yeah. I want to back up on this though they're asking you to. But they're really kind of telling you you're going to do this right. But at least they were polite enough to say will you do this?
Speaker 2:What was it like telling your wife that you're going on deployment because this is like totally unexpected it was. I went home and I told her hey look, it's short notice, I'm leaving in like two weeks. It's one of those things where they need me. Yeah, they need a knowledgeable individual on a bunch of different things on the ground.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go.
Speaker 2:She's like okay, that, that, that by then she's like that's who you are and that's what you do, and it's, it's part of life and you know, it's still very cool of her, yep.
Speaker 1:So you go to Africa, yep, can you talk about what you did there? I can talk about it now.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we went to Niger, africa. We were supporting a Reaper drone unit. The unit was there to support African forces in I think it's Chad, that's just north of that to fight off terrorist organizations. The French were there bombing. So we would launch the Reapers, they would go and laze the targets, french would drop bombs on it.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's kind of exciting actually, and so you know we're also there building um. The group I was with we were building the tent city for all the follow-on people, all of the um, maintenance facilities for them, uh, covers for the reaper drones that were there. So we built. We were working at night because it's too hot during the day to work. Yeah, it's still scalding hot at night. So we'd work at night and then we'd come back and we'd get a little bit of sleep and then we'd work, get up during the day and work and build the tents that we're going to be moving into. And so we're doing that for about the first four days.
Speaker 2:We get everything built, we move out of the hard, builds into the tents, and then they're like, hey, we need somebody to go with us to buy supplies for the rest of everything else. And they're like that's your guy. They point to me. I'm like, thanks, cool, thanks. So here I am, I get done working 12 hours at night, come back, hop in vehicles. We're all unarmed, unarmored vehicles, so we're soft-skinned vehicles driving into town. We have one person with a gun with us hitting on him, and then we had the FU agent, which is, you know, a pay agent, carrying around a half a million dollars worth of cash on them. And then we had the food agent, which is, you know, a pay agent, right Carry around a half a million dollars worth of cash on them.
Speaker 1:You guys are a real good target.
Speaker 2:Yes, so we're, we're driving around and we go, and we're we're going to these different places and we go in. It's like we need to talk to the owner. We get the owners like, hey, we. We get the owners like, hey, we need to sit down and talk business. And you need to shut your business down during this timeframe because we're buying, you know, a hundred thousand dollars worth of assets from them. We just you and I, cause we're we don't want randoms walking in here when we're trying to pay you out a hundred thousand dollars in us cash.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you kind of want to keep that under wraps.
Speaker 2:Exactly so you know that went on for a long period of time and then they came back and say, okay, so the first group of people I was there with they left after two weeks. After we built everything, I was there for another two weeks. They're like, hey, we need to do site survey of this area. Where can we build, where can we do a more robust area? I was like, all right, well, I'm the only person on the ground with the experience and knowledge and so I start doing site surveying of different areas and say, okay, you can build here, you can build there. This is what's your base layout.
Speaker 2:They send me the base layout from my time there at the Warfare Center because at the Warfare Center or not, sorry, at Ramstein I instructed the leadership course 06s and 07s, the other officers that came in and plus all the senior NCOs, for how to design and lay out a bare base. So they sent me the plans. I started looking. I was like, okay, this works here, this doesn't work there, you need to change this, you need to change that. And just walking them through the whole thing and whether or not they used my plans I don't know, know, but at least gave them some good information to build the new base and I left you know after that total. Four weeks went back and I had to get rid of everything I went over there with because it was a that really dark red sand. Yeah, gets into everything, gets into everything. I had my desert-colored boots with me and they were red boots when I came back.
Speaker 1:So four weeks wasn't a long time, but it might have seemed like a long time. I mean, you talked about a lot of stuff to do in four weeks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was jam-packed. It was something every single day, constantly, constantly going um.
Speaker 2:We flew back commercial after we flew in military right and so we have the um magenta passports, so you know, diplomatic type stuff. And we're going through and I'm looking at the this young guy with us with me. I was like, well, this is going to get interesting when we go to customs to clear out of the country, cause we have no stamp saying we came into the country, yeah. So we walk up and we show them that they're like out of passports and they start talking. I was like, okay, right, passports. And they start talking. It's like, okay, they're like you know, in broken english to us, uh, why are you here? Why were you here? It's like diplomatic reasons. So we're here, right you?
Speaker 2:don't need to know, um, it's like okay, well, the next trump card I have is our diplomatic orders, the blue, blue stamp on it. So I pull those out, show them that and they're like okay, see you later. Go. Just left you alone after that. Left us alone after that. That's when we went on and flew commercial all the way back to Germany.
Speaker 1:So you get back to Germany, you get back to what you were doing.
Speaker 2:Yep, get back to what I was doing. Yeah, everything's about normal after that, okay.
Speaker 1:So you get done with your three-year tour in Germany, which sounds amazing, even with the detour. Where do you go from there?
Speaker 2:Went to Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas. Okay.
Speaker 2:Went, there had some stuff happen with the family that we needed to focus on, and that was the last little bit of my time in the military was focused on the family. I got put into a um, a job that I really didn't enjoy because it was, uh, dealing with um, uh, the um, security clearances and things like that for the unit, cause they're like hey, we know you need to focus on some stuff with the family, so we're not going to have you run the shop, we'll have you over here so you can come and go however you need to. I had one E7, no E8 above me. He didn't like that. He's like why are you coming to going? Well, the commander knows.
Speaker 2:Commander told me you know it was a oh six Like this is what I'm doing, right? Commander directed focus on this, okay. And he was like yeah, yeah, he didn't like it too much, but there was nothing much he could do about it. So you know, you know, and one thing I told my wife it. So you know, and one thing I told my wife is like you know, when it longer becomes fun, that's when it's time to go. And after about a year and a half, two years, I was like this is no longer fun.
Speaker 1:So this is when you decided to retire. This is when I decided to retire.
Speaker 2:Okay, about a year and a half out it's like, okay, it's time to retire, it's no longer fun. I would love to stay in longer, but if it's no longer fun I'm not going to enjoy it, I'm not going to be happy, I'm just going to turn into that. You know grizzled, you know unreal. You know senior NCO that everybody just steers clear of Right. And you know didn't want that because you know wanted to have good interaction with the younger folks and you know try to pass on some, you know pearls of wisdom to them and whatnot as they're going through. And you know, but unfortunately the stuff the family like wasn't engaged with the younger folks anymore and yeah. So I was like, okay, it's, it's, it's time to go well.
Speaker 1:I think some, you know, a lot of times people don't realize when it's time to go right. Because I totally agree with you when you leave, you want to leave with good memories, you want to leave with a good impression. You definitely don't want to be that person who's just there until they either kick them out or they're just no longer able to stay in. So good for you for making that choice. So you get done with your assignment and you are retiring. Tell me about the last time you put on the uniform and how that feel.
Speaker 2:The last time I put on the uniform was well. I don't know. You know I cause I wore my uniform for my final out of the base, which I was kind of just kind of like a real big blur, just kind of surreal timeframe. Um, everything was happening really quick, and then you know, then you're on terminal, leave and you're gone, you're out.
Speaker 1:Right. So then you wake up one day and you're not putting the uniform on Exactly.
Speaker 2:Tell me about that. It's it's different. Um was a tough transition on that Cause it's like okay, cause I. It was one of those last you know. Okay, hey, I'm getting out, not sure where I'm going, and I had. I was doing so many other different things with the family and trying to get my medical stuff taken care of that I really didn't have time to go. Where do I want to apply to jobs at? Yeah, so I had no job applications out there, nothing, as I was just getting out.
Speaker 1:You did exactly what we tell people not to do Right. Right, because I'm hoping you can say a lesson learned If you're going to get out, you better have a plan. Because let me ask you this so when you, when you got out and you're like, holy crap, I got a family, you know, I've got bills, did you just take the first job that came along, or did you?
Speaker 2:wait so. So the reason I'm here in Michigan is that my sister and her husband retired before I did Okay. So they were both air force, both you know crew chiefs C-130s and I was like, look, I need to be around family. I haven't been around family in my whole 20 years. So we're going to Michigan, Going to shack at my sister's place for a month or two, however long it takes to find a job, and we'll be there with family. You ever been to Michigan before? Nope, Well, we took a little vacation up here before I officially retired. Okay, I was like, yeah, okay, I mean it's, it's a green state and other green state I've been to before.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have many mountains, so that's a little bit different.
Speaker 1:I'm used to mountains but you'd never like really, but like you were just like. It's like oh, we're going to go to Michigan. I mean you did come and visit, but you'd never really been here before.
Speaker 2:Okay, All I knew is my sister and her husband were here. They enjoyed it, they liked it and it's like okay be here as family. What brought them here? My sister's husband is from here, Okay.
Speaker 1:All right and they got jobs. I'm assuming they got jobs here in Atlanta, they both?
Speaker 2:retired from the military. Oh, they both got disability. Okay. And so they were pretty well set up to retire and not really want to. They could do something if they wanted to, or they could not.
Speaker 1:Live comfortably and not have to work Exactly.
Speaker 2:That's not a bad thing, yeah, bad thing at all. My sister's like me. She can't stop, she has to be going, she has to be doing something. Yeah, um. So she's now a school teacher at columbia elementary okay down there in jackson oh well, good for her, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, get, get here and, um, start trying to figure out. You know we got a little bit of turmoil leave, so I still got some pay coming in. Yeah, start looking for a house and everything else. And I was like I knew I wanted to be. You know X amount of distance from you, know where my sister and whatnot was and we found a nice little place. You know it's not the forever place, but it's a place to be for this time being, right now. Yeah, like a starter home kind of yeah, yeah Say, time being.
Speaker 3:It's been eight years we've been out of the place. What the heck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, eight years isn't that long. Right right.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I find the. I start going out, applying to different places, going to job fairs and everything else, and I went to this one job fair. I walked in and I was like, well, it's probably in the job fair for me. So I walk in and I'm the nicest dressed person there, including the people that are hiring people. Oh boy, yeah. So it was a staffing agency that put on the job fair, yeah. And so I found the person in charge.
Speaker 2:I said, hey, look, a lot of the jobs you probably have to offer here aren't in my wheelhouse, you know well, overqualified for and everything else. So if there's anything that you know of or anybody you could put me in touch with, I'd appreciate it. And he goes all right, let me take a look at your resume. He looked at it. He's like, hey, I'd appreciate it. And he goes hey, all right, let me take a look at your resume. He looked at it. He's like hey, I got a place for you and ended up being down in the holiday city, uh, working out in the Menards um distribution warehouse. So I went down there after you know, looking around for you know, three, four weeks and talk to them, and they basically hired me right on the spot and there was maintenance is maintenance, whether no matter what you're doing or on and hired me in as the assistant maintenance manager. So I was like okay.
Speaker 2:I could do this, did that for about a month because I had applied for consumers as well. The funny thing with consumers is that I applied for a position in the work management center first. Then I applied for a position that I'm currently in at the system control center. Folks at the work management center they said, no, you're, you're not qualified enough for us. It's like okay. So after four weeks at.
Speaker 2:Menards I a call from, uh, brenda house. Yeah, so it was. She's like hey, we'd like to offer you a position and you know the money was better and everything else. So I was like I'll take the position with consumers and told the folks at menards, if hey, unless you give me, I'm leaving. They're like nope, that's more than our manager here for the whole site makes like okay sounds good to me yeah, so it goes to me, I'll go.
Speaker 2:And so I I get in with consumers and been there, got got hired in right before Thanksgiving. Same year I retired and been with consumers ever since Different positions within the control center Another group of good people to work for. Shortly after I got hired, when I was going through my training, I had a major medical thing going where I had to get both my hips replaced from the time of service and my whole family was like, oh, they're going to drop you, they're going to let you go. And it's like, no, they put too much money into me right now just to let me go, because that's when they were still doing the NERC certification. Yeah, yeah, so it's like no, they're going to hold on to me. And yeah, yeah, so it's like no, they're going to hold on to me. And they did. They took care of me through that whole process and I was out for eight to 10 months total.
Speaker 1:Well, here's. Here's the thing about consumers. Energy, too is. I don't think it had anything to do with the money. Oh yeah, they take care of people. They really do. It's a it's, uh, it's when you hear people say it's a great place to work, it, it really is a great place to work. And, um, did you find it felt as close to being in the military as you could be without being in the military? As far as just how it felt to work there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it also didn't hurt that a lot of the people in the control room were prior military.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean it had.
Speaker 2:You know they, when they said, hey, we care about you as an individual, they meant it and um, and that's one of the key things that um I took from the military is like hey, your people are your, your biggest asset. Right, they're the most important asset. Without the people there's, you can't do anything.
Speaker 1:No, and if you feed them and pay them and take good care of them they'll do whatever you ask them to do, exactly. Yeah, and I think consumers has that down to a science. You know there's a statistic out there that someone who leaves the military 50% of ex-military folks will leave their first job in the first year and 80% a total of 80% will leave it by the end of the second year. And I have not seen that to be true in the utility industry. It's different.
Speaker 2:People go there and it's like their forever home, almost. I'm sure it helps out with the um, the lineman union, the brotherhood that they have there. It's gone throughout the, you know, permeated throughout the organizations as a culture of people matter. People are important and you need to take care of your people, no matter what well, and you and you know you mentioned the union.
Speaker 1:That's the other interesting thing about the union at Consumers Energy is that it's not an us and them thing, it's a we all the way. I mean, you still have your little fights.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But at the end of the day, it's a how can we solve this together? How can we work together to get this done? And I found it to be. It's a great place to work. I would agree with you. Um, I hope you have a an amazing second career there, um, just as as I did. Uh, so you're at consumers now. You have, uh two kids out of the house, as we talked about. You have one that's in college. Um, even though they're out of the house, they're never completely off the payroll.
Speaker 2:You realize it's correct, correct. I still, I still help help out. How's your wife doing? My wife, throughout the whole time we've been married in in the service and everything else has been in a phenomenal position that not many spouses have been able to be into. Um, she's had the option to work if she wants to, but her primary things that she wanted to always be is a stay-at-home mom, because she didn't like being a latchkey kid growing up, coming home and mom may not be there. Then, when mom was there, she really enjoyed it and liked it. So she's like that's what I want to be there, I want to be there for my kids. So I want to be a stay-at-home mom and been so lucky and blessed that through my time in the military and now that I'm out, I've had jobs and positions where that's been um. She's been able to do that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you said something there. That kind of um struck a chord with me. So you know she grew up as a latchkey kid and didn't want to be one Right Um, and so she did things differently. Do you think that you're that you parent differently based on your relationship with your parents? I mean, we all take, we all take some of those things and we continue them on. But I know I parent differently because, um, there were things that I didn't like about my childhood. Did you find yourself doing the same thing?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean a lot of tough love growing up from, from my dad, and so I I try to.
Speaker 2:You know there's still some tough love because at times that's, um, from my time in the service, tough love at times is the only way people respond, right, um, but it's they don't have to do it all the time. So I've tried to reel some of that back and you know where I would falter to. That is like I try to not do it and just kind of okay, this is the. You know, asking the, the pointed questions. Do you understand why we, we want, you know, expect this from you, you know, and then they go well, yeah, it's like okay, can you explain that? And then they're like well, I was like okay, so you, you really don't know. Sorry, let me try to explain to you why we're expecting the X, y, z to happen and you know, give you the, you know the, the bigger picture and on how it.
Speaker 2:You may not see it now, but later on in life, these choices and decisions you make as a, as a young kid going through high school, college, you know, in earlier life, will affect way down the road, because that's why I talk about, talked with my kids about my time at school, how bad I was and how that affected me at the end of my school. And if I wouldn't have done that, then guess what? I wouldn't have been in the military, I wouldn't have had all this other stuff If I wouldn't have buckled down and done what I needed to do. And that also goes into the military when I faltered and failed because there was. There was times in the service where and then the Azores I was almost kicked out of the military because it was brought up that I had a learning disability. Well, just having to learn to do this ability doesn't mean that you're not qualified to be in the military.
Speaker 2:So, I'm going to buckle down, I'm going to do what I need to do and I'm going to improve myself in the situation I'm in and make things better. Coming back from that year, deployment and stuff like that things were really hard. I mean, um, when they talk about that, all wounds aren't visible, it's right, real. I mean there's people out there that have real hard times with it. I mean, granted, I didn't, um directly shoot at people, got really close to a couple of firefights, but they never happened. They were able to de-escalate it.
Speaker 2:Um, but I, I've seen plenty of other horrors that mankind can do upon each other and it sticks with you and you. You know hard time working through those things, you know and I talk about that with my kids as well. It's like it. I had a hard time with it I most of the time. You never saw it for me, but there's plenty of times I was freaking out inside internally of I don't want to be here, I need to get out of the situation, I need to go, and. But I had to hold it together and not expose because I didn't want you to be that afraid and everything else. So it's, it's um and also seeking the help for that you know making the decisions of okay, if I want to have sought out the help I probably may may not be where I'm at right now. You know making the decisions to do things that are going to benefit for the betterment of you later on in life. Right right.
Speaker 2:Those are the hard things for them to see and understand. As a young kid I'm sure they'll see when they get older they'll be like like I've done. To my dad I say I thank you for what you've done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we joke. We jokingly say that, uh, the older I get, the smarter. I am Right. Yes, it has. I don't think I've gotten any smarter. I think the I think the kids are figuring it out. Um, you know, um, but that's, I mean, what you said. There is really important. The other thing, the other thing I kind of gleaned from that too, is that, um, you know, taking care of yourself, your mental health is not any different than if you had a broken leg. You'd go get it looked at right. Yeah, well, it's kind of the same thing. They're not going to put a splint on it, but they can certainly help you through all of that. Well, I, um, I really appreciate the time we've had together today. This has been amazing. People are going to learn a lot from the lessons that you've learned in life. But before we go, I always kind of ask the same question, and that is you know, a hundred years from now, when people are still listening to these stories, what would you like people to take away from our conversation today?
Speaker 2:I'd say courage. Courage to do something that is outside of your comfort zone. Courage to get up when life knocks you down, because life will knock you down. It's not always rainbows and fields of flowers. Hard things come with life.
Speaker 3:The courage to stand up, brush yourself off and move on, and if you have a hard time, getting up, look for that person next to you, that person you truly can count on.
Speaker 2:They say call them at 2 am in the morning. They'll be there at your door, Reach out for a hand and help and, if you are, you know, be cognitive of your people around you, the folks that you know. If you see them struggling, because we all at times you go oh, I never saw that company, they were there, we weren't paying attention. We need to be a little more cognitive and helpful of our brothers and sisters and reach out that hand.
Speaker 1:All right. Thanks for sharing that. Thank you.
