Hail to the "chief" with the troops in a war zone at 60

Tennessean:

For the second time in CW5 John Frederick Goodrich's life, the "chief" will celebrate a birthday while deployed to a war zone.

In the summer of 1968 he turned 22 in Vietnam, a hot, muggy country whose maps were full of place names he could not pronounce.

On Monday, his life's odometer will turn over to 60 on a desert air base where 118 degrees is a mild June day, in another country whose city names twist his drawling Tennessee tongue.

In a war powered by privates and specialists in their late teens or early 20s, Goodrich is a soldier's soldier who works hard, plays hard and enjoys "the hell out of both."

As a top chief warrant officer, this Brentwood resident is the go-to guy, the answer guru, and the git-er-done-right-the-first-time man. He is stoutly built, like the Golden Gloves boxer he once was, with thinning gray hair and a slightly lopsided smile. With his rank, he often rubs shoulders with the brass, but his heart beats loudest for the bottom end of the promotion chain.

These "kids," as he calls them, are part of the reason the career Tennessee Army National Guardsman agreed to a six-month tour in Kuwait — with occasional forays into the unfriendly skies over Baghdad — even though he was 59.

"I'm at Ali Al Salem,'' he said.

The base is about 60 miles from Kuwait City. He is there in support of a Tennessee Army National Guard unit, Operational Support Airlift – Detachment 25. The unit flies C-12 aircraft, a propeller-driven, twin-engine plane that can carry up to eight passengers or 56 cubic feet of cargo. From the base in Kuwait, the unit makes almost daily runs into either Iraq or Afghanistan.

With two years and two months until he reaches mandatory retirement age, Goodrich could have avoided deployment because he is the command chief warrant officer for the Tennessee Army National Guard.

"But like a dummy, I volunteered,'' he said, laughing, during a phone interview.

According to the Tennessee National Guard there have been several other soldiers in their late 50s who have deployed.

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"Flying into Baghdad now, that's something. They have to spiral down to the airport. Every so often your butt gets tightened up, but that's part of it,'' he said.

His golfing buddies at Brentwood Country Club, who know him as Ricky, thought he had lost all rational thinking when he announced his decision. So did friends from Vanderbilt athletic events, another of his favorite civilian pastimes.

And so did his wife of three years, Patti Brown, added Goodrich.

He admitted the timing was terrible. After he committed to the deployment, his mother had to be placed in a nursing home and his first grandchild was born. He did not get to spend much time with either before flying out. In the meantime, his son, Rick, has moved to South America with his job.

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An interesting story about a guy who is not ready to get old. He is not up there with the 75 year old doctor who is going to Iraq that I linked to last week, but I still appreciate his service. He adds:

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This war is different than the one of his youth, Goodrich noted, in a rare serious moment.

"It's an appreciated war," he said. The chief believes the American public appreciates soldiers' sacrifices even if the war itself is divisive.

"That was not like us in 'Nam. Nobody cared that I had been in Vietnam,"

He will be home in September, just in time for the bulk of the Vandy football season, Goodrich said.

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There must not be many Democrats in his neighborhood.