Suzanne Rice

Jul 16 2022

Tales from Nick’s FARRP – #14 Crazy Stories – 1972

The “Tales from Nick’s FARRP” series are a fictionalized version of real events and are dedicated to the memory of friends and classmates from the Class of 1969.

“So, Tony, were there any funny or crazy things you remember from Vietnam?”

* * * * * *

I was talking to my beer-drinking customer Tony, known to the Army as Major Williams, sitting on a stool on the other side of the bar from me in “Nick’s FARRP.” That was a drinking establishment for Army guys in Fayetteville, North Carolina, just outside Fort Bragg, that my Uncle Nick left me when he died. Some chemical he was exposed to during his three tours in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot, or as they like to call themselves, “aviator,” gave him cancers that he eventually died from.

I know nothing about the Army, so I am always asking the guys in here questions. My name, by the way, is Gil Edwards.

* * * * * *

“Well, Gil,” Major Tony replied, “anyone who ever served in any of the military services can tell you about the crazy and funny things that happened during their time in. Most of the stories you hear these guys here talking about are the crazy things that happened to them. So, yeah, I suppose you could say I have some stories.

“Silliest thing I remember from Vietnam was in late summer of 1972, when three Special Forces guys in a jeep turned up at our aviation field. They had heard that there was a former Green Beret, now an aviator in the 60^th Assault Helicopter Company at Ninh Hoa. Our airfield was located along the South China Sea in central Vietnam, some twenty miles or so north of Nha Trang, so they wanted to look me up.

“They had a proposition for me. It seems that they had a “perfectly good” Bravo-model Huey helicopter they wanted to trade to us for eight cases of steaks.”

“Are you kidding me?” exclaimed the guy sitting next to him, a short younger soldier I knew as Captain Kenny. “They wanted to give you an operational helicopter, in trade for eight cases of steaks? How much does a helicopter like that cost anyway?”

“That, my young friend, is a question I can answer,” replied the stout older Army guy on the other side of Major Tony. I knew him as Chief Warrant Officer Rod Jordan, a long-time Army master aviator who had been best friends with my late Uncle Nick. He had been flying Army helicopters for nearly twenty years, since they had graduated flight school in 1962 and gone to Vietnam for their first flying tours.

“A Huey helicopter, regardless of the model or year delivered to the Army, cost $238,000. When the first operational B-models began deliveries in 1962, Bell Helicopters negotiated a fixed price with the Army. Later on, as the Huey models got bigger, more advanced and more powerful, the Army insisted that the fixed price of $238,000 each remain in place.

“Over the years, the B-models got supplemented with Charlie-model gunships, and later D-model troop carriers. The helicopter war in Vietnam kept on growing, and Bell couldn’t deliver new models of Hueys fast enough. The Marine Corps got in the act, buying E-models, so the Air Force had to get their F-models as well. In the later years of the war, the extended-cabin more powerful H-models became the mainstay in Vietnam, but always the price remained exactly the same.”

“Hey, Miss Peggy, bring me another beer if you would,” Chief Rod interrupted himself, before continuing. Miss Peggy is my bar manager and mentor, the widow of Uncle Nick and Rod’s life-long buddy, Miguel.

“Through 1972, Bell Helicopters delivered over 13,000 Hueys of various models to all the military services, always for the same flat price. Lady Bird Johnson, who was the primary shareholder in Bell Helicopters, got really rich off the Vietnam war. So did lots of politicians. But I guess that’s how it has been since time began.”

Captain Kenny looked puzzled. “So then, why did these Special Forces guys want to trade a Huey for eight cases of steaks? There must be some story that goes with that.”

“As a matter of fact, there was. Back around 1966, a Special Forces sergeant from a Green Beret A-team in the Central Highlands of Vietnam got approved to go to helicopter flight school as a Warrant Officer Candidate. He went all the way through the program, but two weeks before graduation, there was a scandal at Fort Rucker over a colonel’s daughter, and he was bounced out of the class and straight back to Vietnam.

“Eventually his Special Forces A-team learned of a B-model Huey that had been written off the Army’s property books as a combat loss, just because some aviation unit didn’t want it anymore. Knowing how to fly, this sergeant went out and flew the Huey back to the team camp in the Central Highlands. It became the private helicopter of the Green Berets for the next year and a half. He flew it into the refueling points throughout central Vietnam, topping it off with jet fuel and keeping the oil levels up.

“In 1970 the sergeant was rotated back stateside to Smoke Bomb Hill at Fort Bragg, so the helicopter just sat there abandoned for two years. In all the time it had been flying, the sergeant had never kept track of the flight hours he put on the bird, and no maintenance had ever been performed. There were no maintenance records at all for the helicopter.

“The deal the Green Berets were offering us was this: They were all being rotated back to Fort Bragg and wanted to throw a party for the Montagnard villagers they had supported and fought with for all those years. For eight cases of steaks the helicopter was ours. All we had to do was fly it out. But with no flight records and no maintenance ever having been performed, there wasn’t a single aviator in our company, not even that crazy AMOC warrant officer I told you about earlier (https://thedaysforward.com/amoc-1978/), who would dare even crank it up. As far as I know, it is probably still sitting there, waiting for someone brave enough to try to fly it.”

“Wow,” I responded to Major Tony’s story. “Tell me another story from Vietnam.”

“For the price of another beer, Gil, I will be glad to.” As I drew him a fresh beer, Tony continued entertaining all of us at the bar.

“In February 1972, an AH-1G Cobra from my unit, callsign Gun Runners, had finished its mission and was heading back to our airfield, when the Aircraft Commander (AC) decided to have some fun. QL-1 is the main Vietnamese national highway that runs along the South China Sea coastline from Saigon to Hanoi. The AC and his front-seat copilot were zipping along low-level on QL-1 at 120 kts about five feet above the road. They were flying south between Qui Nhon and Tuy Hoa, having fun honking around the turns and up and down the hills, just barely off the pavement.

“Cresting a small hill, they were surprised by a 5-ton cargo truck rumbling north, which scared the crap out of both the aviators and the truck crew. The AC yanked his Cobra up, but not before the truck driver and his assistant saw helicopter skids slam right around their heads.

**Five-ton Truck Before the Encounter with the Cobra**

When the Cobra hooked its skids through the canvas bows on the truck, the impact ripped the entire skid assembly off the bottom of the gunship. The shocked truck driver and his assistant found themselves still driving in the truck cab, surrounded by the framework of the Cobra skid assembly. I have no idea what the story was they told when they got back to Qui Nhon.

“Lacking any landing gear, the Aircraft Commander radioed ahead to our base that he wouldn’t be able to land the bird. The airfield commander rounded up every spare man to come down to the flight line and start filling sandbags. While the Aircraft Commander held the gunship at a two-foot hover, they built a sandbag cradle the length and width of the Cobra belly, being extra careful to stay clear of the tail rotor. That tail rotor works like an 1,100 horsepower vertical weed eater, which can turn a man into a pink cloud in an instant.

“Once the troops had built the sandbag sidewalls up about three feet high for lateral stability, the Aircraft Commander was eventually able to set his bird in the makeshift sandbag revetment and shut it down. Since so many aviation units had stood down by that late in the war, it took two weeks to get a replacement Cobra skid assembly delivered in country.

“The million-dollar attack aircraft was saved, but that Aircraft Commander was never again allowed to fly in country. He spent the remainder of his tour filling out maintenance forms and records.”

“Yeah, Tony,” I responded, “but I want you to tell me a story about you. What was the craziest thing you personally experienced?”

“Well, I suppose that would be one afternoon in mid-1972, at the finish of a long day of ‘ash-and-trash,’ resupplying the companies in a Korean regiment of their Tiger Division. We were returning to our base after more than eight flying hours, after over 40 direct combat support sorties. It was …”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “What do those words mean?”

“Right, my young civilian friend,” Major Tony replied. “I forget you don’t understand all the Army jargon. ‘Direct combat support’ is the term for our missions flown to support the combat troops out in the field. DCS means we weren’t under enemy fire at the time, and we didn’t have Cobra gunships flying cover for us. But we were still in bad-guy country, flying over territory where we could take fire at any time.”

“All right, then.” I replied, “but what is ‘sorties?’”

“A sortie is one take-off and one landing of an aircraft on a combat mission. For an Air Force bomber or cargo crew, a sortie might last ten hours or longer. When we Army guys were flying single-helicopter ‘ash-and-trash’ missions bringing rations, water, ammo and mail to the troops in the field, a sortie could be ten minutes or less, just the time it took to fly from the regimental logistics pad up to a company of troops on a pinnacle and land to off-load their supplies. Then another sortie back to the pad, to pick up a load for another company.

“On a typical DCS day, we would do that all day long. We got really good at landing heavily loaded on mountain pinnacles in turbulence, and the troops were always glad to hear the famous Huey WOP-WOP-WOP as we were bringing them stuff they really wanted.

“So back to my story. As the Aircraft Commander, radio callsign Ghost Rider 8, in the left pilot’s seat, I was letting my new-guy co-pilot get some extra stick time flying us back. I decided it was time to light up the cigar I had been carrying in my pocket all day long.

“We were cruising home at 2,000 feet above the terrain, straight and level, with 80 knots of airspeed whipping through my left-side window. True story. As I put the cigar in my mouth and started to look for my lighter, out of nowhere a hand reached in through the open window, flicked a Zippo open and lit my cigar.”

“WOW!!” was the simultaneous exclamation from everyone at the bar listening to this story. “How on earth could that happen?”

Major Tony took a long sip of his beer, paused, then replied. “My crew chief, riding in the left rear well of the Huey, had seen me reaching for my cigar. So he unbuckled from his station, climbed outside the helicopter and walked forward balanced on the skid up to my window, and reached inside. He told me he just wanted to see the look on my face when he lit my cigar.”

Thanks to Zandy. In memory of Bill and Terry and Eddie and Jerry

Jun 12 2022

Field Force Chuckles – 2021

Each state has a “West Point Field Force” of volunteer grads and parents who help young candidates assess whether West Point is a fit for them and assist the Congressional staffs and West Point to assess each candidate’s likely degree of success at West Point and in the Army.

In Washington State, our G2 classmate Joe Brillante has led the Field Force since 2004, with distinction. Under Joe, cadets from Washington have punched way over our population weight in the number who became First Captains, Brigade Staff, Regimental Commanders, and Rhodes Scholars, among other honors.

On a Sunday afternoon in September 2021, the Washington Field Force held a by-invitation event for candidates seeking admission to the rising Class of 2026. Two majors from the USMA Department of Admissions were on hand. They and Field Force members, including this author, met with individual candidates. Field Force members wear these magnetic badges that hang in our blazer pockets, and for grads, show class year.

As I was shaking hands with a young candidate for the Class of ’26, he read my badge, and his eyes got big.

“Did you REALLY graduate in 1969?”

“Yes”

“Wow. My father wasn’t even born then.”

“Well, it WAS about a hundred years ago.”

“So that would make you … [eyes rolled up, trying to do the math] …”

“I’m 73.”

“Are you really 73?”

“Last time I checked.”

“Wow. You look pretty good for 73.”

In his defense, the time gap between his prospective West Point experience and mine is huge. It would have been as though, as a candidate, I had been interviewed by a member of the class of 1912!

These young candidates are nearly always amazing, and occasionally entertaining as well. West Point’s future is bright.

Jun 04 2022

R-Day – 1978

Each summer at West Point, new cadets arrive on Reception Day (R-Day) starting their West Point experience. Perhaps a month or so before, a call goes out to the wider West Point community (spouses of faculty and staff, older teens – I was the wife of a professor in the Math Department) saying that they could help when the Firsties (Seniors) and some Cows (Juniors) had a practice run-thru for R-Day. Those who would like to participate in that project would be given instructions about when to come, what to wear and what they might expect as pretend New Cadets. Those of us who wanted to help would be treated just like the new class of cadets. The cadet cadre would be able to practice how the day might go with real people to lead.

**The Beginning of R-Day for New Cadets** (flickr.com)

I was fascinated with the idea, especially since my (much) younger sister would be visiting and we could both have a unique experience. Wouldn’t she be able to write a wonderful essay when she got back to school in the Fall – “What Did You Do on Your Summer Vacation?” At the time, she was a high school track star (400m, 200m hurdles, and mile relay) so I was confident that she would fit right in and master all the requirements. As a mother of a toddler, I wasn’t so sure of my own ability to do any pull-ups or many push-ups, but I was willing to try. And my sister was excited about the possibility of testing her grit.

We reported at the designated time and place after dropping my two-year-old daughter off at the babysitter. We didn’t know what to expect, though I had heard about the three responses and a few other tiny details having been around West Point graduates for many years by that time. Three responses? New Cadets quickly learned that during that first day, they could only speak when spoken to with these three responses: “Yes, Sir”, “No, Sir.” “No excuse, Sir.” By the time of my New Cadet experience, there were five responses; two had been added since 1969, “Sir, may I ask a question?” “Sir, I do not know.” I was prepared for the three responses, but it was such a scary day, that it was hard to remember the exact words of each of the new responses – I wished there were only three responses; I could remember those! Did not want to get in trouble.

After a greeting from the Superintendent (since it was the practice day, it was some other authority in his place), new cadets were then sent on a sort of obstacle course going from one station to another to get whatever a new cadet would need to get through the next few weeks. In small groups (squad size), we would learn to march in a single file wherever we were led and never speak until spoken to.

My sister and I were separated as soon as we arrived. We were on our own like the real new cadets who wouldn’t know anyone nor what was happening. I went along following the cadet before me one station after the next. Towards noon, we headed towards the gym for a physical test. Oh, no! Just as my squad entered the gym, I heard my name called, “New Cadet Rice, report to your squad leader.” What? (I didn’t say it – not a response.) I did as I was told, “Yes, Sir.” I was handed a slip of paper saying that New Cadet Smith (my sister) had broken her ankle and I should take her home. I was directed to where I could find her. What happened? Nothing! She had been handed a similar note that said she have broken her ankle and she must leave – this was an exercise to see how the cadre would handle such an occurrence on the real R-Day. I was happy that I didn’t have to display my pathetic physical skills, but I was sad that my sister had somehow been chosen to “break her ankle”. She would have loved to try to complete the course.

Years later, our own son would be a new cadet. It was twenty-five years since my own experience, but I clearly remembered the concern I felt when I was a “New Cadet” on the practice day so many years before (I could go home; he could not!). It is hard for any parent to say the last goodbye (a new cadet has ninety seconds to make his goodbyes on that fateful day). Most parents had no idea what lay ahead for their New Cadet; maybe, that is better. Bill and I each knew the pressures that were coming after our family goodbye.

Bill had warned our son to keep his eyes straight ahead, follow the guy before him, don’t call attention to yourself – blend in. On the R-Day of 2006, families were allowed to roam around West Point after their goodbyes. We were to avoid the cadet area but were encouraged to stay for the Oath Ceremony later that afternoon where the New Cadets would make the following promise: I, (name), do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and bear true allegiance to the National Government; that I will maintain and defend the sovereignty of the United States, paramount to any and all allegiance, sovereignty, or fealty I may owe to any State or Country whatsoever; and that I will at all times obey the legal orders of my superior officers, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

**Transformed to New Cadets – Leaving the Oath Ceremony**

At some point in the day, Bill decided to take us to the Cadet Store, which, though we had to walk through the cadet area, was allowed for parents and families on that day. We walked past a squad of New Cadets that was waiting outside the barber shop. Since we all heard the same directions to keep our eyes straight ahead, we intentionally walked as quickly as possible past the squad of newly-shorn new cadets – don’t distract them; don’t look at them. Don’t get close. Don’t smile at them.

About a week later when we had returned to GA, our son was able to make his first phone call home. First words out of his mouth were, “Did you see me?” Of course, we eventually found him at the Oath Ceremony; it had been hard to find him. “No, not then.” When? “You walked right past me! I could have reached out and touched you!” When? How was that possible? Turns out he was one of the newly-shorn cadets outside the barber shop. Even if we had looked closely, we may not have recognized him – no hair and with newly-acquired Army glasses on his nose; contacts were gone. He was transformed into a cadet in only a few hours.

One thing, I was happy about was that we pretend cadets didn’t have to make a trip to the barber shop; not sure how I would have looked with no hair!

May 29 2022

The Good Old Defense Finance and Accounting Office – 1974

For lack of any better ideas, when I resigned my commission a year after coming back from Vietnam, my wife and I decided to try out life in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. When we first started to work on implementing our plan Avril imagined herself as a high school choir director and I a high school math or science teacher. Half of our plan worked out perfectly when she became the choir director at Hartford High School in White River Junction, Vermont. The other half of the vision had me standing in front of five classes a day in our middle school teaching fifth grade math. Life doesn’t always work out quite as you might imagine.

**Ray’s School – Hartford Memorial Middle School** (hmms – facebook)

Even though the 125 or so 11-year-old kids were not highly stimulating, I still enjoyed working with them none-the-less. I especially enjoyed working with the kids in my one class of over-achievers. We ended up working through the required textbook by the end of February, so I had to ad-lib for the remainder of the year. It was actually quite fun to try all kinds of new ideas out on them, all of which they excelled at and enjoyed. Interestingly, years later I found out that one of my absolute brightest students, a young Hispanic girl, graduated from West Point with the Class of 1985.

Though I enjoyed working with my students, the kids I ended up spending the most time with were the students in my wife’s various choirs and ensembles. After my teaching day was done, I would wander over to the high school and hang out with them as my wife finished up the day working with different kids on songs or duets or whatever might be happening at the time. Being a young couple in our late twenties with no kids of our own, quite a few of the teens enjoyed spending time with us … and we with them.

While all of this was happening, we were also getting more and more involved with a little Baptist church that we had discovered while driving around with our realtor looking for a house. And as part of that increasing involvement, we became quite avid helpers with the church youth group. Almost all the kids in the youth group went to the high school my wife taught at, and several were even in her choir. So, our first year of teaching was spent learning our jobs, and growing in our faith, and doing typical high school teacher and youth group leader type stuff.

Towards the end of our first year, we began to become quite strong in our desire to want to live our lives as fully-devoted followers of Jesus Christ. To that end we became quite burdened with a desire to share our faith with the teens that we were routinely interacting with on a daily basis. So, during the summer between our first and second year we began to plan for a special event that we would hold at our house the first week of school in September.

When the designated Saturday arrived, we ended up with about 25 teens over at our house where we plied them with hot dogs and hamburgers and everything a teen could want to eat. The mealtime was then followed by a time of sharing and singing of songs. Avril and I and some of our youth group kids shared about how we had become Christians and about how important our faith in God was to us and the way we lived our lives. We closed out the evening by inviting them to come back the next Saturday night for a Bible study for any who were interested. The following Saturday about 15 of the original 25 showed up.

After that first Bible study session I realized that the kids who had decided to come back needed to have Bibles of their own. So, I went to a nearby Christian bookstore and ordered a dozen Bibles. I wanted to make sure that each one of them who didn’t already have a Bible had one of their very own. In due course the Bibles arrived, and we passed them out to all the kids. We really enjoyed seeing them diligently use them over the next year as we met almost every Saturday night for our group studies.

**New Bibles For Bible Study** (pelahatchienews.com)

The twelve brand new Bibles ended up costing me $142 and change, which was a good hunk of money in those days. But I really felt that it was something that God wanted me to do. Not long after giving the Bibles out I received a very official looking piece of mail from the Defense Finance and Accounting Office at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ohio. In it was a check for some back pay that I was owed. There was a note explaining that a random audit of my pay records had been performed and that I had been underpaid at one point during my time in Vietnam. The check in the envelope represented the amount that I was owed plus any accrued interest. The check was for $142 and change. To this day I remember the amount because God taught me a great lesson through this experience. When you step out in faith and do what you believe God is calling you to do, He will be with you every step of the way.

The following year Avril and I left White River Junction, Vermont, and I headed off to Dallas Theological Seminary to study for full-time ministry.

**Dallas Theological Seminary – a Long Way from Vermont**

But when we left, we left behind quite a few young teens who had come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and who went on to live their lives for Him. One young girl from our group ended up becoming a medical missionary, and one of the young men ended up going to seminary himself and becoming a minister of the Gospel. As I’ve said before, God has truly given us a blessed life indeed.

Apr 28 2022

Honor: When Honor is Absent – 2006

The call from Governor Jeb Bush’s Chief of Staff came at 9 o’clock at night. “Can you take over the Florida Correction’s Department at 6 am in the morning?”

“What?” I said. “Let me think about that.”

“No time. Give me an answer. The Governor wants to know. Yes or no.”

A few more words, than this from me. “Well, at least let me talk with my wife, Pat, about it. She’s right here. I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

“You can’t talk about it. Not with her, not with anybody. Yes or no. What is it?”

“Okay. I’ll do it.”

When I showed up at my new office in the morning, I couldn’t go in. It was blocked with “Crime Scene” tape. Later, I got the explanation for the cryptic phone call. The former-Secretary of Corrections at the time of the call to me was talking to his corrupt deputy, who had flipped under duress from the FBI. Wearing a wire under his shirt, he was trying to get the Secretary to say the words that would reduce his own later sentence (he got 3 years). But the FBI was getting anxious that the Secretary was onto the treachery (but not the wire) and was about to whack him (he had invited him to go out on a rowboat with him on a remote prison-grounds lake). They then gave the Governor the courtesy of a quick call (before they moved in) to line up a replacement – under the condition he would not share what was going on. The Secretary didn’t whack anybody that night, but he did get eight years.

So began my introduction to a large organization (28,000 cadre, 95,000 inmates, 155,000 probationers and parolees, 60+ prisons, and another 70 or so work camps, road camps, half-way houses, etc., and a budget of $3.5 billion.) that was corrupted from the head down. Up until that morning I had been Florida’s top drug official (colorfully labeled ‘Drug Czar”) but had recently informed the governor of my intention to retire. Apparently, that didn’t faze him in offering me this new ‘opportunity’.

He did give me the courtesy of holding my initial meeting with senior staff in his conference room (it was a Saturday morning, so no one was there). The meeting with the top 12 department officials that morning was tense; before it ended a phone call came in to the number three honcho in the department hierarchy announcing there had been a prison break in the Panhandle. “How often does that happen?”, I asked. “First time since I’ve been in the department” she answered. It hadn’t taken long for the gauntlet to be thrown down. (It was a fake, a message to the ‘new guy’ – me — that he couldn’t handle the department; we found the two ‘escapees’ four days later hiding in the attic of a warehouse inside the prison, where they had been secreted.) A ‘resistance movement’ had already begun.

The department had been corrupted, but by my estimate at the end of my time there was that only 10 percent or so were so involved. Yet that was enough to make the climate toxic for everyone, not just inmates and offenders, but also for the cadre who were bullied, cajoled, or otherwise threatened to ‘play ball’ (violence by rogue cadre against rival cadre was common, as was inmate abuse). Also corrupted (or dysfunctional) as a result were the many systems that make a corrections system run properly (medical care was poor, food service was abysmal, contracts were chaotic, maintenance was broken, and so on). With this recognition early on, prioritizing became easy. Figure out who the corrupt are and get rid of them, replace them with good people (and there were lots of good people in the department) and fix the operating systems.

Week two began with a meeting called by me of the 400 ranking members of the department (all with nametags) at a central Florida town. At 40 tables of ten apiece (which I scrambled every hour), all were introduced to me as I queried the regional leaders about their agendas and priorities, after which I talked to them from the front of the room about ethics, discipline, and behavior, liberally sprinkled with quotes right out of Bugle Notes (‘an officer on duty knows no one’; ‘…discipline is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment…’). Some were entertained by such ideas (so much so they failed to recognize that among them were strangers who were noting their defiant under-the-breath comments at the tables — and their nametags) which helped me isolate on where to go first. By the end of week five, the first tranche of leader departures (wardens, IG, general counsel, others for a total of 12) ensued, usually on the heels of an early morning visit by me to their presumed fiefdoms.

Some of this was not easy, as rural counties in Florida are bastions of Corrections Department employment, are heavily intermarried or otherwise connected with local law enforcement (Sheriff and Warden brothers-in-law is not uncommon), and not shy about contacting their political benefactors in the Florida legislature. One of the chief goons (think of the movie “On the Waterfront”) was related to a top Florida law enforcement official and the strongest union in Florida represented the prison guards. But bit by bit progress was made, although it took a while to uncover all the rot.

And the rot was extensive if zany at times. For example, inter-prison softball competition (by rival guard teams) had become an obsession. Professional ball players were recruited as ‘officers’ but never pulled a shift. Steroids were smuggled into the prison system. It produced better long-ball hitters and made the dealers some money as well. Monies for the lavish weekend ‘tournaments’ were raised by compelling guards to sell T-shirts with the team logo for $20 apiece (the guards, whose average salary was $32,000 a year, were made to pay for the shirts up front to the supplier – often the warden or another ranking official; he or she then, hopefully, could find family and neighbors to buy them in turn). Thereby, well-funded post-game celebrations, usually at pricey hotels, became wild events, not uncommonly erupting into drunken brawls between teams.

**Logo of Florida Corrections for T-shirts** (News4jax)

A convicted murderer and inmate, a former doctor who killed for the ‘mob’ and who retained substantial wealth in his outside accounts, was caught (by a tapped phone line) paying a former head of the department to ‘engineer’ a prison transfer to be with his lover. The former Secretary in this case saw no problem with that. He was merely working for a client, in his opinion. The transfer didn’t go through. And it became more difficult for him to consult with inmates after I played the tape for him in my office.

It also was dangerous from time to time. On one occasion, we penetrated and broke a drug-smuggling enterprise in a prison in the Florida Panhandle. Prison staff, up to highest level, in cahoots with inmates were trafficking drugs into the prison. We caught on and broke it and on the morning after doing so, I showed up with a new warden I had selected to take over. Although I generally was armed, guns could not be brought into the prison, where I had to go to restore order. The SOP called for me to wear a signal alarm that with the push of a button would bring a response squad of guards on the run and the armed tower guard (with M16) to take a ready-to-fire stance and await my command. As I moved with the new warden through the grounds, a group of about 12 inmates came out of a weight-lifting cage in the exercise yard and came toward us with seeming hostile intent. I hit the button and the new warden hit his. No response. The reaction squad did not appear; a glance at the tower showed me the guard there had abandoned his post. We were on our own. Thanks in large part to the experienced warden who immediately began to berate and threaten with severe sanctions the dozen now face-to-face with us, they hesitated. So, I reinforced the threats and the warden one-upped me. It was enough to give the inmates pause and they backed away. The upshot was we had to fire a bunch more of the staff, something I had planned to do anyway, I removed all heavy weights from the prisons, replacing them with pull up bars and parallel bars and had guards lead what you would recognize as the ‘daily dozen’.

Eighteen months into the effort of reform and de-corruption, a final confrontation was a prison riot in the Everglades, where the rioters were the guards who had gotten drunk, started a bonfire, and moved with weapons to threaten the life of an uncorrupted guard who was about to come off duty; he had reported to me a horrific act by cadre. They failed as we countered with strength, protecting the guard and vectoring about 20 trusted and capable leaders to the prison, even as I called local law enforcement in on the problem. When I reached the threatened guard (with whom I had placed two armed IG agents during the night) I asked what he needed. He asked that I let him go off prison grounds as he had elderly parents that he stopped by to look in every day after shift. And then he wanted to go home, as he was sure it was past time to let his dog out. Both requests were granted, and he was promoted as well.

**Entrance to a Florida State Prison** (Fl Times Union)

So, what had happened to cause this particular department to become so dysfunctional? Honor had been abandoned. Employment and especially leadership in the department had come to be seen as opportunity, not duty. Certainly not by all, but by the more ruthless who for a while had their way. Once countered, it was not hard to find the good people, very much in the majority. Many of them had in fact stood up to the oppression during the worst of it. By and by, I reminded all of the guards (who prefer to be called ‘officers’) of their oath of office and had each and every one of them recite it again; I also wrote and printed a wallet-sized card that echoed the tone and commitment to duty of in a manner similar to a soldier’s ‘Code of Conduct’. It was to be memorized and held on the officer’s person at all times.

It is my observation that there are always good people that only want to do their duty and to do it well. All they need is a chance to do so, along with the reinforcing signals and support that it is proper to do. Once able to do that within the Florida Corrections Department, decency and functional systems returned. Whether or not such things last rests in the hands of continued honorable leadership. But the key is honor. Leaders and institutions need to hold honor high and never let it erode.

As for me, I retired (my original plan before the Governor’s call), although two years later than expected. But the good news is that somewhere during that time, Pat forgave me for taking the job without talking to her first. I might add, she could write her own story on this, as we did have to make adjustments in our daily routines.