A Life of Service, Twice Blessed
Every now and then, something small will tug at an old thread in my memory — a sound, a sight, a familiar rhythm — and suddenly I’m back in uniform again. Last week, driving home from the Gulf Coast, Barbara and I passed a long line of military vehicles in Missouri. A field artillery unit, convoying to summer camp. Canvas flapping, antennas bouncing, soldiers leaning out the windows with that unmistakable “annual training” look. And just like that, I felt it: that old June instinct. Two weeks of AT. The rhythm of military life that never quite leaves you.
I’ll admit it — for a moment, I wished I were going with them.
Because what I miss most from my years in the service isn’t the schedule or the formations. It’s the people. The camaraderie. The friendships forged in early‑morning formations, long drives to training sites, and the shared understanding that only fellow soldiers truly grasp. It took me a long time to stop thinking “drill weekend is coming up,” but the truth is, part of me never stopped missing it.
One of those friendships still makes me smile. Greg — seven or eight years younger than me — turned out to be from Alexandria too. Our paths never crossed back then, but the Army has a way of connecting people who were always meant to meet. We became good friends, the kind who made drill weekends something to look forward to. We’d ride together on Saturday mornings, pop in a Roy D. Mercer CD, and laugh all the way to Sioux Falls. Nothing set the tone for drill quite like Mercer threatening to “open up a can of whup‑ass” over some ridiculous misunderstanding. By the time we reached the armory, we were already in good spirits.
And then there was Shoe — one of those rare friendships that crosses rank without ever crossing respect. I was an officer, he was an NCO, but none of that mattered. We clicked. We rode together across the Nebraska Sandhills on our way to deployment at Fort Carson, Colorado, watching the landscape roll by and turning the windmills into our own private running joke. How many were spinning? How many weren’t? How many looked like they’d given up sometime during the Eisenhower administration? Just a couple of weeks ago, as Barbara and I crossed western Kansas, I texted Shoe to tell him the Kansas windmills weren’t working very hard. A few minutes later he called and we had a good visit. Some jokes never get old — they just get more comfortable.
My good friend "Sho." at Fort Carson CO.
Shoe and I shared more than road miles. One Veterans Day — around 2004 — we climbed Pikes Peak together. Not drove. Climbed. Two soldiers, one mountain, and a memory that still glows. Every Veterans Day since, we text each other in honor of that hike. It’s our own little tradition, a reminder of a day when the air was thin, the climb was long, and the friendship was solid.
And walking into drill really did feel like old home week. I knew everyone — hundreds of Reservists over the years, plus dozens of active‑duty NCOs and officers who rotated through Sioux Falls on their tours. Every drill was a reunion of sorts, a gathering of people who had trained together, deployed together, and grown together. It was a second family, the kind you don’t choose but end up grateful for.
After selling my newspapers, I stepped into a role most Reservists only hear about: a military technician — the unit administrator, the continuity, the person who kept the heartbeat of the unit steady Monday through Friday. It was a unique kind of double life. During the week, I worked for the Army Reserve as a civilian. On drill weekends, I put the uniform back on and served the same soldiers I supported during the week. Drill weekend for me meant working twelve days in a row, but that never bothered me. I was part of something I believed in.
My career took me places I never expected to go. My earliest summer camps were with the Minnesota National Guard at Camp Ripley, where the mosquitoes were legendary and the tin huts echoed like a snare drum when rain hit the roof. We had jeeps back then, and we’d bounce across the vast training areas, covering units in every corner of the post.
After moving to the South Dakota National Guard, summer camp meant Camp Rapid and the Black Hills — beautiful country, though maneuvering military vehicles through tourist traffic was its own kind of training. The brick huts we stayed in had their own rustic charm, except for the long lines of toilets with zero privacy. Check your modesty at the door and hope the guy next to you didn’t want to chat.
My third and final Panama AT was with the 125th Public Affairs Detachment.. By then, the heat felt familiar, the humidity felt like an old friend, and the memories of my earlier deployments came rushing back.
After joining the Army Reserve in Sioux Falls, my ATs took on a different flavor. One year we went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where the red dirt clung to everything like a second skin. Another year we went to Pocatello, Idaho, where members of our unit taught classes to other Reservists. Different missions, different scenery, same camaraderie.
And then life handed me a second chapter I never saw coming.
After retiring from the Army Reserve, I spent nearly six years working for the Department of the Navy. One day I was in an orderly room; the next I was crawling around inside ships, learning the difference between “fore” and “aft,” “bow” and “stern,” and discovering that steel decks have a way of leaving their mark on your knees. As a public affairs specialist, I photographed dozens of ship christenings — moments filled with ceremony, pride, and the unmistakable energy of a ship coming to life. I stood close enough to feel the champagne spray and hear the crowd’s gasp as a new vessel met the water for the first time.
And the people I met along the way — admirals, generals, members of Congress — weren’t just names in the news. They were part of the world I worked in, the world I helped document. I didn’t chase prestige; my work simply placed me in the room. I was the storyteller, the witness, the one who captured the moment so others could see it.
Every so often, even now, I’ll have a dream that I’m still in the Army Reserve. Sometimes I’m in uniform, sometimes I’m back in the Reserve Center as a unit administrator, juggling paperwork and readiness reports like it’s 1998 again. And in those dreams, I often feel like I’m getting ready to put in my retirement paperwork — as if the decision is still ahead of me, not something I made years ago.
It’s funny how the mind works. I retired from the military in 2011, thanks to mandatory retirement. I retired from federal service in 2018. By all logic, those chapters are long closed. But clearly, they affected me more deeply than I realized at the time. They were part of my identity for so long — the rhythm of drill weekends, the camaraderie, the responsibility of being the one who kept the unit running — that some part of me still lives there.
And maybe that’s not surprising. When you spend decades in a world where purpose, structure, and belonging are built into the air you breathe, it doesn’t just fade away. It settles in. It becomes part of the foundation. So if my dreams want to take me back to the armory now and then, I don’t mind. It’s a reminder of a life I was fortunate to live.
Looking back, I realize how extraordinary it all was. I got to do more in my career than many people experience in a lifetime. I served my country in uniform and out of it. I found purpose in two branches of the military. I met remarkable people, traveled to remarkable places, and collected stories that still make me smile.
But through all of it — the Guard years, the technician days, the Navy adventures — one thing remained constant: gratitude. I never took any of it for granted. I knew I was blessed while I was living it.
And now, in the quiet of retirement, I carry those memories like old challenge coins — not something I hold every day, but something I know is always there. A reminder of the people I served with, the places I stood, and the life of service I was fortunate enough to live.
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