Deployment History:

Comments/Remarks: Hello fellow Gators.  I was a member of the Army ROTC at UF when we won the Warrior of the Pacific Award and MacArthur Award for #1 ROTC in the nation for nearly 3 years in a row.  We had 17 Distinguished Military Graduates in my class and at least one of them (COL Greg Kraak) is still on active duty.  A positive performance in ROTC set me up for Advanced Civil Schooling, and the Army sent me to Graduate School after serving several years in Field Artillery Units.  After Grad school I went on to serve as a Foreign Area Officer in the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria.  Tough duty if you can get it!  I had several years of enlisted service prior to entering UF as an SMP Cadet.  I retired as a Major after 20 years total service and am currently serving as an APMS and Recruiting Officer at USC (the one in Los Angeles J….not the place that Spurrier went).  I wish you all the best of success in your future military endeavors!

Deployment History:

Comments/Remarks: UF ROTC thoroughly prepared me (us) for active duty.  We had many advantages over ROTC students at other schools – weather, facilities, great cadre.  The drill and ceremony skills I received, boring and seemingly meaningless at the time, have served me well for 23+ years in the Army.  Learning how to conduct PT has also been instrumental and to this day I still use many of the basics I learned back in Gainesville.  Best of all were the trips up to Camp Blanding – realistic training!  Hopping into a Blackhawk outside the O-Dome and flying to an LZ with map and compass in hand was great training!  We proved our mettle by winning Warrior of the Pacific award after Advanced Camp in 1981, symbolic of the best ROTC program in the nation.  Fantastic experience and preparation.