Information Technology Services thanks all of the men and women who have served in the United States Armed Forces. We are proud and grateful to have several veterans on our staff. In honor of Veterans Day, we spoke to a few of them to discuss their experiences.
We thank project manager Dan Cohen, information technology architect Lee Badman and project manager Jesse Bickel for their participation in this interview. More important, we thank them for their service.
When did you serve? Where?
Cohen: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, I went through Army ROTC while in college at Rochester Institute of Technology. I entered “active duty” at the very end of August 2001 (!!!). I served in the US Army as a field artillery officer from 2001 until 2005, leaving active duty at the rank of captain. I was stationed in Baumholder, Germany, with the 1st Armored Division, and deployed to Iraq in 2003 for 15 months. I participated in or led countless combat patrols and related operations, as well as various civil-military operations. At the end of 2006, after being out of the military for a little over a year, getting a job, and getting married, I was recalled to active service in 2007 for a second year-long tour to Iraq. This time, I served as an individual replacement on an 11-man team of “foreign military advisors” embedded in an Iraqi battalion of about 450 soldiers. I resigned my commission in 2009 upon fulfilling the mandatory service obligation incurred with my participation in ROTC through college.
Badman: My time in the Air Force started three days after high school graduation and would ultimately span 10-and-a-half years. I was heading down the career path, but there were force reductions in the 90s that sent me back to civilian life – with no hard feelings whatsoever. I had almost a year of technical schooling for the Electronic Warfare career field, which is a far-ranging mix of electronics, radar, jamming and signals intelligence. I was fortunate to be stationed in the Philippines, Alaska, Mississippi, and New Mexico, with temporary assignments around Asia and different bases in the U.S. I was an instructor for Electronic Warfare systems for the second half of my career, and I left the service honorably as a master instructor with a fair amount of accomplishments, military awards and decorations to my credit.
Bickel: I went in right after high school in 2003. I joined the Army and went in as a network systems operator maintainer. I did basic training in Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo., and then did my job training in Ft. Gordon, Ga. I was lucky enough to test out of my field and go into networking. My first deployment was to Okinawa, Japan. I did two years there and then finished my four-year contract at Ft. Hood, Texas. Most of my military career, I spent working on computer systems networking in Okinawa.
One day when I was in Okinawa, I was playing lacrosse against a wall in the middle of the field and an Army captain talked to me and, next thing you know, I was on a flight to Ft. McCoy, Wisc., to try out for the lacrosse team. I went back to Okinawa and had my main job as an operator and then flew around the Pacific playing lacrosse for Morale, Welfare and Recreation to build troop morale, playing games against Korea, Taiwan, Japan. I was very fortunate.
What skills or values from the military continue to inform your work and life?
Badman: The seeds of my current networking skills and troubleshooting mindset were planted back during my Air Force days, and I appreciate that I developed a strong sense of big-picture thinking out of necessity while being entrusted to take calculated risks without fear of retribution if they didn’t pan out. In my early twenties, I was given responsibilities that were bigger than any I may ever have again in my life, and I learned to basically do what was needed for almost any technical or interpersonal situation. I learned the value of teamwork, and to recognize when individual initiative was needed. I learned to trust others, and how to be trustworthy.
As an airman, I saw my share of gallantry, tragedy, triumph and death all up close and personal. I learned to both relish and despise the quirkiness of the military. I worked for and with absolutely wonderful people, and I worked for and with absolutely terrible people. The military is made up of human beings, and under the uniform each of us is still who we are at our cores. Having gone through thousands of hours of technical training and hundreds of hours of management training, I learned that simply being given a title doesn’t make you good at a certain role. You have to work hard to live up to that title.
Bickel: I owe everything to the military. They not only set me up with the GI Bill, but I had the luxury of doing civilian communications training and working with the same equipment we use (at Syracuse University). They sent me to schools and I use the training today with my networking experience. I directly owe my career to the military – from the certifications I got while I was in, to using every penny of my GI Bill and everything from time management skills, organization and my attention to detail.
Cohen: As an artillery officer, one skill I was forced to learn included computing the ballistic trajectory of 155mm/95 pound shells travelling up to about 15 miles; the expectation was that I could confirm no intervening crests in a matter of seconds. While interesting, this has not proven very useful outside the military. However, the exercise of internalizing that process and performing those calculations under duress did teach me that training and repetition can allow someone to do hard things accurately and in a short period of time.
As a soldier, the mornings were early. It’s a cheesy cliché, but one that resonates, that in the military we did more before 9 a.m. than many people accomplish in a day. In Germany (not in combat), my workday started at 5:30 a.m. with the commander’s update meeting, and work did not stop until the day’s tasks were complete. Generally, I did not have “duty hours” on Saturday or Sunday, but the reality was I was always on call for any issue at any hour, any day (unless on leave). This taught me time management and to treasure my down-time (especially with loved ones).
The military offered many opportunities to do the wrong thing, but nurtured the natural tendency to choose the hard-right over the easy-wrong (or more commonly, the ‘slightly-less-hard-wrong’). When I was 23, I was accountable for the ability of 8 men to fight, survive, and win in combat. With this in mind, if the day’s tasks were complete, my team and I would run drills to internalize critical processes as much as possible, in preparation for the day we were called upon to perform those processes under duress. When the team was tired, and hadn’t spent enough time with their families, it was tempting to go home early. The ‘hard-right’ was to keep training. The ‘slightly-less-hard-wrong’ was to send everyone home. Similarly, after an 8-hour patrol in Iraq, the ‘hard-right’ was to perform maintenance on vehicles and equipment so it was ready for use at a moment’s notice. The ‘slightly-less-hard-wrong’ was to just park the trucks, and go sleep or email the family. Generally, no one would ever know which choice you made. Not to sound hokey, I like to think I learned to choose integrity every time.
What does it mean to you to be a veteran?
Bickel: For me, it’s strange because most people have more touching stories or more experience of what it’s like to be a veteran. A lot of times I don’t like to compare myself to other veterans because I played lacrosse for two years for the Army when other people were getting forward deployed. My association to being a veteran is very prideful but nowhere near the bar of most other soldiers.
I’m a guy who believes in brotherhood. The military is our peers, our battle buddies. It’s our sanctuary and nobody else’s. Whatever veteran is out there, you at least know they went through the same minimum experiences – they went through basic, they went through training, they went through breaking you down and building you back up. There’s that common bond even if you never met that person in your life. You know you have that baseline standard of the soldier first mentality and that creates an instant bond.
Cohen: It means that at one point in my life, I was 6’7” and 165 pounds. As my service is in the increasingly distant past, I identify less and less as a veteran first. When I take time to reflect on my service a few times a year, I recall how blessed I am to have lived, worked and served alongside some of the hardest working, honorable people I expect I’ll ever meet. I had the opportunity to live with people from every corner of the United States and from many and varied backgrounds, to know their families and to experience their cultures, and I am better for it. I also had the opportunity to witness first-hand the way abject poverty can devastate a region, causing violence, disease, hunger and all forms of suffering across generations of people. My experience in the service taught me that I can’t save the world, but I can do the good that’s in front of me.
Badman: To me, being a veteran is a thing of nuance. I’m proud of it, but it doesn’t totally define me. It’s certainly part of who I am, but it’s also down the list of what I value in myself after being husband, father, good person and Syracuse University employee. I don’t see all veterans as heroes, as I am no hero. I do value anyone’s honorable service, but I reserve the loftiest esteem for those vets who have given their lives during that service, or who have demonstrated extraordinary courage when it was needed.
As for Veterans Day, I have mixed feelings. Most vets go to work while the banks get the day off, so I don’t really understand the construct. At the same time, I’m pleased that there is reason for all of us to at least think about those who have put on the uniform in the past and who serve today. Freedom is not free, and Veterans Day is an opportunity to at least consider the cost.