Tyler Ogden

Brooke Bryan: I'm Brooke Bryan interviewing Tyler Ogden for Standing Together: Ohio Veterans and the War on Terror for the Ohio History Connection and Ohio Humanities. Today is November 20, 2015. Tyler, can you state your full name and spell it?

Tyler Ogden: Tyler Ogden.

BB: Great, thank you for being here.

TO: You're welcome, thank you.

BB: SO we're just going to start, sort of from the beginning, to get a sense of who you are and kind of where you come from. When and where were you born and what was your early experience like?

TO: I was born April 29, 1982, Community Hospital, Springfield Ohio. Started out living in town with my parents, moved around from different houses, and had a really amazing childhood. I went to Horace Mann Elementary and Nightingale 00:01:00Montessori in Springfield up until I was time to go to high school, and then I went to Northwestern High School. My parents bought a farm on Ballentine Pike and it was really old and needed a heck of a lot of work, but it's really neat. I graduated from Northwestern High School and been a resident of Springfield ever since, until here recently we moved to Huber Heights, but I still come home to Springfield. It's where all my family and friends are from, so that's where I work and that's pretty much it.

BB: How many siblings did you have and what were some of your, kind of, early experiences like around middle school, or your neighborhoods, or what was your family like?

TO: Well I would say -- Okay, so I have 1 younger brother from my mom and my 00:02:00father. His name's Jer and he's 30 years old and he's a great guy. He was -- I was his support all of his life, up until probably like the last 6 years, he's been my supporter, so we kind of flipped roles but my brother's very mature, hard worker, makes more money than I do, and no college. He's proud of me and I'm proud of him, we support each other really well.

My mother and father divorced in '99. No, excuse me, '91, and I was 9 or 10 years old, my brother was 7 or 6. My mom kept the farmhouse and wanted to do her thing with raising animals and doing 4-H with me and my brother. My dad worked for Ernst Concrete and did concrete sales and married another woman. Never had 00:03:00any more kids, but my mother ended up remarrying and having twins, I believe she was 42 or 43 years old. Was kind of a big time for her in her life, but also I had just turned 18.

I was working at Competition Accessories [on Leffman's Lane 00:03:28] and she called me because I didn't have a cell phone, those didn't really exist back then as much as they do now, and she called me and said, "Hey, I've got to talk to you," and so they called me on the PA thing and said, "Hey Tyler, you've got a phone call," so I went and picked up the phone. It was my mom and she said, "Hey, by the way, I want to tell you I'm pregnant." I said, "Excuse me?" Me and my brother, 18 and 15, and you're having more kids, but it was fine. Then she went back and she found out she was having twins. A couple days later, I'd been 00:04:00thinking about it, I'm getting ready to move out and a couple years later my brother probably be out of the house, and I -- What's this child going to do? Having the twins was awesome. My mom and my step-dad got married in Pennsylvania. He is of Asian descent, his family -- His father and mother lived in China and came over here and had him and his sister. He's a great guy, he's very intelligent, and is great to my step-brothers and my mother and they have a really neat little natural farm where they like to open raise everything, there's animals everywhere. It's a real neat thing.

It's a humbling time for me because I can always go back home, and my mom's a great person. She's always been a great mentor and always knows the right things to say. All throughout my life, she has been wonderful. To watch my younger 00:05:00brothers just turn 16 makes me feel really old. At the same time, they're playing high school soccer and they're really good, on varsity in their freshman year and I was so proud of them.

Yes, growing up has been different. Me and my brother were kind of like the -- We did all of the bad things the rest of my family didn't do. I never got in trouble for them, he did, and I was very much involved with everything, but at the same time I tried to stay out of everything too, because I was like it's just me and my brother, and I felt like there's a new family here, so me and my brother were kind of just loners, floaters in the family.

Once we got to be grown-ups and now we're still relying on my mother to watch our children now, it's just like a neat experience to have this integration of 00:06:00everybody and their lives together. Wonderful life, wonderful growing up. She's -- If it wouldn't have been for my mother, I don't know where I'd be.

BB: Is there a tradition of military service on either side of your family?

TO: No. That's one thing I've looked into, and wanted to look into, because I didn't want there to be any -- I didn't want to be the only one. Now that I figured out that I am the only person, I'm like wow, this is kind of silly.

To tell you a small little story, I was going through some of my grandparents' things back, it's been probably 10 years ago. I found this real old looking what I thought was a toy rifle, and it wasn't. It was an M1860 Spencer carbine 00:07:00repeating rifle from the Civil War. I thought: oh my gosh. Once I started doing research on it, because I was already in the service but was still new, so everything was still evolving within me. Military heritage and the wars and just different things that had happened throughout the years. When I found this rifle, I called my grandmother and she said, "Honey, we don't own a rifle," she said, "Call your grandpa."

I called him, and he said, "No, we don't own a rifle, we don't like guns." I said, "Guys, this stuff was in your stuff. This is awesome, this is a part of history. Who was it in my family that was in the Civil War?" They said, "Well we don't know." So I started doing research on it, and my great aunt lived in Washington DC, she went to the National Archives and she found information on this rifle for me. It was sold to the Pennsylvania Armory back in 1866 or 1867 as an extra rifle that was manufactured by the Spencer Company, that was sold to 00:08:00the armory there, and then later on handed out to farmers, and part of my family was from Pennsylvania. This rifle had never been in the Civil War, however it was a part of history from that era, that I felt was pretty significant.

That started my heritage of who I want to be, who I want to grow from. I was like, this is neat, because to me the military was just a job. It didn't signify anything important to me, other than this is my job for the net 20 years and I'm going to retire, and that's it. A lot of people I meet were like, oh, I only served for 4 years, that's no big deal. I don't care if you served here, you served overseas, I don't care if you were a cook. Every little tiny job fits into something, does something for somebody, so be proud of what you did. You 00:09:00signed up for a reason, to do something for yourself or for somebody else. It wasn't just for the heck of it.

Sorry, I know I kind of went off track there, but I want to tell you that the heritage part of it has grown ever since I found that rifle, and I was like this is really neat. Redirect on your question again, because I want to finish saying what I was going to do say.

BB: That was actually perfect. At what point did you decided to enter the Armed Services and how did you very first start to make that a consideration?

TO: I was working at a couple different jobs and I was trying to go to school. My mom had paid for a couple semesters for me and I wasn't doing very well. I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with myself, but I realized I didn't want to work on doing the things I did. I went to JVS for technical prep, which 00:10:00means I could pretty much do anything, but at the same time I'm not an expert in anything so I don't have any certifications in anything. I'm not going to make any money. I've seen people that worked there for 20 years an they're only making like $13.00 an hour after all these years. I thought, I'm never going to make it out of this city or make it to anywhere in my life if I don't do something with it and be productive.

I said okay. My father and I had a long sit-down chat one day. He's like, "I think you should do something like join the service or something. You want your schooling paid for." And I said, "All right." I went on to being -- I went to an active duty recruiter. I started talking to them, and I was probably at [MEMS 00:10:50] in Columbus, about within the same week that 9/11 happened, like a week before. I had gone through a whole process, which now I understand the 00:11:00process, but it's very scary being that young and being like what am I supposed to do. There's a recruiter sitting down telling me, "Here. We're going to send you through this and we're going to do that and then you're going to come back." There was no jobs I wanted or something, I can't remember. Then when I decided to finally do it and go back, that's when 9/11 kicked off.

My mom said, "Absolutely not. Not now, not ever, you're not doing this." I waited 2 years, and then my dad said, "Okay, you've got to do something Tyler. You're plateauing here, man. I want to see you excel." I was like, "Dad, you never went to college." Well, back in his day, that was okay. This era, it's not okay. You've got to have some formal education or service to fall back on, and I was like okay.

Then I decided -- Well he had a best friend that worked out there, name's Tim Adams, at the guard base where I work now. He had married and met a girl that worked at the base as well. I said, "Okay, this is cool, whatever Dad." He took me and my brother out there during the nighttime and they were doing a night flight and taking the F-16s, running up the runway. I was like this is really cool, and we got to go on the runway and watch it and he showed me the whole base, and I was like I'll do it. I'll think about it. I talked to the recruiter and from that day forward, I joined February 3, 2003.

BB: 2003?

TO: Yes, 2003.

BB: You joined the Air Force.

TO: The Active Duty Air Force.

BB: [inaudible 00:13:05]

TO: Air National Guard.

BB: The Air National Guard-

TO: Ohio Air National Guard.

BB: -was your entry point.

TO: Yes.

BB: Ohio Air National Guard.

TO: Yes. When 9/11 kicked off and happened, my mom pretty much told the recruiter, "No, my son's not going anywhere," because she knew that something was going to happen, whether it be war, but realized that war didn't happen til how many years later, a couple years right? Was it 2000- late Apr- mid April 2000, or not mid-April, sorry. Mid 2003 or the beginning of 2003, when they said we're going to war now.

I wasn't scared, it didn't impact me anymore. I don't know why we waited so long to go after Saddam or anybody for that matter over there, but it was so --

BB: Did that- how did that impact your consideration for joining the National 00:14:00Guard at a time when you knew it was probably pretty likely that you would be deployed?

TO: At that point I had to comfort my mother, and tell her, "Look Mom, I've got to do something with my life, and I know this is scary for you but at the same time, I want this." By then, I was a little bit older and she was more understanding, and so I went and did it. I was 17 or 18, maybe, I don't know, I can't remember, when I first talked to the recruiter. It's all a blur, but it's nice because the recruiter that recruited me in the Air National Guard, I work with her every day.

Man: What were your recollections of 9/11?

TO: I was working at Snyder Golf Course in Springfield, which is now shut down. I was mowing the 9th green. I was the lawn care, or landscaping caretaker, right? We pretty much did everything to maintain the golf course. I was 00:15:00listening to Bob & Tom on a wireless headset, and I was going through my third pass on one of the strips across the green, and you had to hit these pedals and you had to get to the other side and hit the pedal and lift the deck, and then it was this really unique -- I was very proud of what it looked like when we were done because it was really neat to mow that grass.

I remember listening to Bob & Tom, and all of a sudden the alert came over the radio that one of the towers had been hit. I remember thinking to myself, oh my gosh, this is scary, what's going on? I didn't quite understand what was -- I just knew a plane had hit the tower, I didn't know that it was a terrorist act, I didn't really know what terrorists were like. I hadn't joined yet, but I knew that it was a violation of something. Planes don't just hit buildings, unless 00:16:00it's a suicide mission or something of that nature, to hurt people. I remember seeing off in the distance a plane that I came to protect later on, which was NAOC, National Airspace Operations Command, which is a really big Boeing 747, it looks just like the presidential aircraft but is like a mobile Pentagon. Later on in my career, I had to guard that silly plane, actually both of them.

It was just really interesting to -- I look up and I see this plane taking off, which I thought was the president's plane, but little did I know that it didn't have a seal on it. I only saw the left hand side of the plane and from a distance I couldn't tell. I could just tell what it looked like the president's plane, I was like what is it doing in this area? It had taken off from Wright Patterson not long after the towers were hit. All 5 branches of the service all 00:17:00work on the same thing, and it was an operations center, but in the sky. It was really neat. I've never been on the plane, but I've talked to a lot of people. Pretty cool.

BB: Did you hear the sonic boom in the area that day?

TO: I probably did not, because they scramble jets to intersect aircraft. From knowledge that I have of friends that I've talked to before I joined that base, we are in a training mission zone up in Alpena and that there were live armaments on the aircraft. A lot of people say that the plane that went down over Pennsylvania was due to human interaction with trying to fight their way out or trying to survive. I do believe that. At the same time, I can't believe that the nose of that aircraft and the tail of that aircraft could be located 2, 00:18:003 miles apart from each other, and not something hit it to cause that. From what I understand and what I've been told is that our aircraft locally were in Michigan and they were on the runway to do their training, and ended up getting overtaken by higher authority saying, "This is what's happened. Your instructions are to intersect [tail number dut-dut-dut-dut 00:18:37] over this area. Go now." That was the pilot's job. It was like a lifetime was mission, when they thought they were just doing training scenarios but they had live armaments on these aircraft to go shoot land targets for their training, but yet they had to really use them to shoot down civilian aircraft.

From what I understand is that that pilot, when he returned back, said, "I'm 00:19:00done. I'm out. I can't believe I just did that." They had to pull him out of the plane, because he was so distraught by something that he had to do. That story will never leave my mind, the thought that -- I mean, who was this pilot? Why do we not speak of him? Where is he now? Is he okay? Did this really happen? Think about it, I've talked to friends that have been there before my time, at that base, and I'm thinking wow, the significance of that is huge. To know that that could have been one of our guys that had done that. I'm sorry to share that story with you, if it was hard to hear, but his actions probably saved the lives of many others. Yes, it's a loss of life and it's very tragic and sad, but at 00:20:00the same time it could have prevented other people from dying somewhere else.

BB: What did it mean to you to take the oath of service, and has that meaning changed over the years?

TO: The oath of service initially is something that is repeated: you say it to me, I repeat it back to you. You raise your right hand, you have your feet together, your other hand down by your side, and you repeat after me or vice versa. At that time, I really didn't know what the oath was all about. It didn't really signify as much to me as it does now, because going back and reading things later on in life --

Because everything's so new and you're going through all these emotions and experiences. You're like oh my gosh, all this stuff is overwhelming and all this information is thrown at me at one time. Well, down the road they repeat this 00:21:00stuff. It becomes repetitive thought in your mind. Now I sit here and I read the oath now, it's like oh, okay, I've got a job to do and this is the oath I've sworn to take. It's an oath that will never leave me, and I'm giving up, I'm sacrificing my life to better serve this country and the people in it.

To do that, to really say the oath, makes me feel like a humble person inside, like I'm doing service for others, either because they don't want to or they can't. That to me symbolizes pride and something that nobody could ever take away from me. Even if it was at a loss of life, it would be because I did my job. I know, dying, I would be doing my job. I didn't know that was going to be 00:22:00a question but that's a good one.

BB: Maybe we can zoom in to boot camp. Where did you do boot camp? Can you describe that experience and what that transition from civilian life to military life was like?

TO: I don't really recall much of basic training, like exactly when I went. I just know it was within a year after I joined. I want to say it was 4 or 5 months after I joined. I remember being extremely hot. It was at San Antonio, Texas, Lackland Air Force Base. I was in the 324th Training Squadron, I was -- The logo for that one was The Knights. My drill instructor was Sargent Nance.

I remember getting to the airport, getting to the first training squadron and the bus stopping and thinking, and this was the bus that transported us from the airport, and I remember thinking to myself, oh my goodness what did I get myself into here? Because I seen people scrambling and people yelling, and when I joined you could still kind of yell at people up in their face. All that stuff's changed. It's become a kinder, gentler Air Force we have to mold into society, as far as the way we treat our people and they come back with totally different experiences. I'll tell you about that here in a minute.

My experience was I got off the bus and there was instructors like hound dogs, yelling at us, trying to get us to shape up into some form and then rushing our bags upstairs and then coming back down. We're all -- They're called rainbows, rainbow flights because you're all in different civilian clothes and you're 00:24:00getting yelled at, and you have to get this sir thing down. There's no sir sandwiches, that's yes sir, and then I don't know sir, and -- Sir sandwich me. It's so confusing. The reporting statements, I always screwed those up so bad.

Reporting statements were a thing that I was like, oh gosh, I'm going to get this down, but you can't show any expression. It's nothing like Full Metal Jacket, there's no R. Lee Ermey yelling at us or anything like that, cussing at us, but it felt that way. I mean, that movie is intense. I got to meet that man during my military career and it was amazing. I shook his hand and I talked to him, he signed a bayonet from the Vietnam Era that I obtained. I have that, I wasn't going to bring that in here but it's a memorable thing for me because he's one of my favorite characters, not characters, I'm sorry, actors and 00:25:00military men. He's done a lot.

Anyway, you had a job to do. Everybody was assigned a job. If you didn't volunteer, you were voluntold. It was one of those experiences where you either volunteer for something or you end up with scrubbing the floors in the bathroom. I did not want the latrine jobs, no way. I asked a couple before I left, or they told me, "Volunteer for laundry crew." I was like okay, can't be that bad.

Wow, was it ever -- I mean we had to, we bundled everybody's stuff up and then the only thing that was not separate was your underwear and your socks because you couldn't put tags on your laundry mark. We take all the stuff and everything would come to the center aisle and then we'd just scoop it all up, take it downstairs and start washing at the end of the day. The laundry bags stayed 00:26:00inside so we'd have to get these bigger laundry bags and we looked like a bunch of elves carrying these baskets, not baskets but bags, down the stairs.

We lived on the 2nd floor so it was like a flight of stairs all the way down. We'd go to the laundry room and you're not allowed to talk, you're supposed to be studying, and you just do the laundry. The second it stops, you better get it in the dryer, because there was instructors that came through there all the time, yelling at people. It was noisy in there, and it was hot. [You're talking 00:26:30] washers, dryers, going like crazy. You get everybody's laundry together, you do it, and you take it back upstairs once it's dry. Then you sort it out on the floor. Because there was no names on there, there was just the first letter to their last name.

Well, the way they had separated everybody between 2 bays, these were A through M and N through Z. I knew the way I wanted it to happen was that in the day room 00:27:00you separated the laundry A to M, N to Z, and then you laid out piles on the floor for each letter. If you knew what letter you were when you came in, to your last name, you knew what pile to go to, and I was the one that set that up because nobody else was -- Everybody else was like just come to grab and crap. I'm like I'm not wearing a medium shirt when I'm supposed to be wearing a large, and looking like a fool out there with my sleeves clear up to here, all cinched tight, because somebody took my large when they were -- you know what I mean?

I always was the first -- I was like I'm not losing my laundry and I'm not sharing a shirt with [Dunster 00:27:39] over here. Even though we were really close friends, he was smaller than me, so I was like I'm not wearing his medium sized shirts.

One of the most unique things I do remember about basic, and this is a neat story because it led on into later on in my career. It's a small service, and here's how it happened. I was in basic training. The dorm chief, which the 00:28:00instructor picks out, is usually one of the oldest, one of the wisest, or whatever. They pick them out of the 40-some that are in the bay, or 60-some. Well this guy, the dorm chief, reports to the drill instructor and reports anything that happens, and he marches the people, he does night accountability and stuff like that. It was like living in jail, honestly, because your feet leave concrete pad and -- They always told us they got canine and they got cops waiting to take you to jail, dogs waiting to chase you down and chew your legs off.

Your feet never left the concrete that was underneath these big buildings. There was like walkways underneath each bay, and it was three stories tall and in the center had the chow hall and then, it was just weird how the, or dining facility they call them now. It's weird how all these things, it's like -- If you look 00:29:00down an aerial view, it's like a two or, like a plus sign, okay? Then each pod has three separate flights, first floor, second floor, third floor. Underneath each one is where you gathered in the mornings, where you gather to go to chow, where you gathered after your classrooms, and there was classroom doors all the way around the bottom, and then a central command. Now each training squadron had that.

Sargent Nance, since I didn't get to have -- Since I was laundry crew, I missed evening mail time, mail call. We'd all go in the day room and he'd pass out mail and he would look at it first and embarrass the crap out of everybody. Say your girlfriend sent you a picture or Mom sent you cookies, like, "Oh Mom sent you cookies, huh?" He would like -- I remember coming back up from laundry crew and everybody would be like, you'd see the shock on their face, like Sargent Nance 00:30:00just got done embarrassing the crap out of them.

By the end of like the 8th week, Sargent Nance became like a friend to us. He sat us down in the day room. I remember the first couple weeks, he was just in their ripping us a new one. He -- Since I missed mail call because of laundry crew, I had to go knock on his door and give a reporting statement, and then I had to do an about face and walk away if I had mail or didn't have mail, it didn't matter. I asked him. Obviously everybody else is getting mail, I want to see if I got mail. I go up to his door, and he's like, "What do you want Ogden?" "Sir, Trainee Ogden reports. Do I have any mail?" Or I said, "Trainee Ogden reports." "Yes, what can I do for you, Ogden?" "Sir, do I have any mail?" "No, get out of my face." "Yes, sir."

About face, and he watched me because I wasn't very good at it because I got nervous. He's like, "Try it again. Turn around, try it again, you suck at this." And I was like argh, dang it, so I turned back around. He's like, "You didn't turn around right that time either." He's like, "Do it again." He just made me repeat it like 6 or 7 times within the first week, until I finally had it down. Every single night, he's like, "Practice makes perfect, son." He's like, "You will have this down." I was like, all right.

I remember seeing Dominic LaGiglia inside of his office all the time. This guy was my bunk mate. I slept on the top, he slept on the bottom bunk. I remember every time they had like -- When the first couple weeks we were trying to like develop a wall locker. We had to stack these shirts in a perfect like pyramid brick thing, pull the tweezers, line everything up just right, it had to be in 00:32:00perfect display order at all times. You had to set up a night display, you had to make your bed, there was like hospital corners and the shoes had to be in line, and everything had to be perfect, okay? I was just like, this is crazy, and Dominic, poor guy, he was always in the instructor's office or doing something downstairs for accountability and never got the training. I didn't, obviously, it's a teamwork effort, you don't want anybody else to fail. Nobody else saw that Dominic was failing on the stuff. He'd be up til 3:00, 4:00 in the morning trying to do all this stuff.

I finally was like I can't get no sleep, this guy needs my help. I finally look over, I didn't want to say Dominic. I was like, "Let me help you dude." I was like, "You seriously need some help." He said, "No you don't have to do this, this is my stuff." I was like -- He's like, "I need to get this training." I was like, "Listen to me." I was like, "This is all about teamwork to get through the 8 1/2 weeks to get the heck out of here. So won't we just work together on this? I'll help you out, you help me out, look after me, whatever it takes, and we'll do this together." He's like, "All right." "All right. We're going to do this 00:33:00together Dominic." Him and I became really good friends, he's from Utah, Salt Lake City. He's in the Guard as well.

We get to go to do inspections. This is like once a week, they had night time inspections. The instructor would come through, this is later on, this is by the 4th week I think. The drill instructor would walk down the line, you're supposed to stand to center aisle. He's looking at your bed, he looks at your wall locker, and just start ripping people's butts that don't do things right. He gets down to me and Dominic and he looks at Dominic and he's like, he looks at all of his stuff, then moves on, because Dominic works hard. Then he gets to me, and he inspects my wall locker and he inspects -- He looks at Dominic's too because he knows I'm doing Dominic's stuff. He comes back over to me and he's like leaning forward, and he's like, "Clean the dust off that top shelf for me again." Then walks to the next guy, "What in god's name?" He'd just start 00:34:00ripping, because I was like, okay I'm in cool with the instructor now, I'm doing my part. At first he was ripping me every single day, and you don't want them to know your name.

Unfortunately, this guy knew my name and he knew it quite well, because I had to always go to his office, so he knew me and Dominic's last names, LaGiglia and Ogden. "LaGiglia and Ogden, come here!" He was always calling for me and him to go do stuff together because he knew that me and Dominic worked well together. Well, this is to tell you how small this Air Force is, right? We go to basic training, we're both cops, we both go to the same tech school together which is just right across Truemper Street Bridge on the other side of Lackland, so we're stuck on Lackland for like 4 months, 4 or 5 months. We go off to Camp Bullis together, we go training together, we stay in the [huntmans 00:34:53] together, we trained hard together. We were always friends and we always did fun things together.

Then we went back to our separate guard bases, one in Utah and one in Ohio. I 00:35:00never talked to him again. At that time, Facebook really wasn't all that popular. It wasn't even existent really. I think Myspace was, but I didn't use that. Yeah, I don't even know what that was. Plus internet was still dial-up, and that's just horrible. It's weird to say that.

Now, so when I went to go deploy, I got down to Salt, no -- El Paso, Texas. I was in El Paso, Texas unloading a box truck, and went to go turn around to hand a bag to somebody, and there was Dominic. We didn't even know each other were there. I was like -- I stopped and I looked at him, and I was like, "Dominic?" And he was like, "Tyler?" And I was like, "What are you doing?" He's like, "Well what are you doing?" I was like, "I'm unloading this truck, you're supposed to 00:36:00be carrying the bags." He's like, "No, why are you here?" I was like, "I'm going to Baghdad." And he's like, "Well me too." I got down on the truck, I gave him a hug, I was like, "Dude, it's been 10 years. How are you?" He was old and grey now, which I was like, "You're grey now." He's like, "You still look like a little kid."

The pictures from 2011 to now -- Crazy. I look like a little boy in some of the pictures, from my trip over there. It's amazing how much you age from experiences like this. Granted, my life over there wasn't that bad, but man it'll suck the life out of you. Make an old man of you real quick. I'm just like, I can't believe this. Look at a picture of me now on my phone versus what pictures I had back then. I was like wow.

That's my basic -- I do remember a lot from basic. That's the most significant 00:37:00part, but Dominic always told me, he said, "Dude," he's like, "I wouldn't know what to do without you." He's like, "You did everything for me, you made my bed, you shined my shoes, you made my wall locker perfect." He's like, "I never failed any inspections, it was because of you." I said, "Dude, I'm not -- I'm all about teamwork, I'm always about helping the guy next to me, because in turn I know you're going to help me." Which he always did, so it pays back in the long run. Go on.

BB: Is there a moment where you realized that you had transitioned? That you were no longer a civilian in your thinking or your actions or the way that you interacted with other? Is there a moment or an event where you --

TO: Probably after tech school, when I actually started doing my job, and I was wearing a uniform every single day and I was interacting with civilians. I kind of got this mind set in me like, okay, I'm exercising military law, and I'm also 00:38:00exercising civilian law, as a Security Forces person. Working at Wright Patterson, it kind of molded me into -- Okay, I'm a military member, this is who I am. I look back on it; I started reflecting on it a couple years ago. Where would I be without this service? Where would I be without this commitment that I've made, that has been so many years worth of time that I've gone through and I've worn this uniform, I've done my job and I've always excelled or performed? To think where would I be at without this, it just really symbolizes a lot within me.

Sometimes I don't think about it. Sometimes I don't, like I'm wearing this, I don't feel military, but I know in here it's always been embedded in my brain and my actions, the way I interact with people. Because I had to interact with 00:39:00military and civilian people, so I had to be cognizant of the way I interact, because the way I spoke to a military member is different than the way you spoke to a civilian. When I, say I pulled somebody over and I knew they were a spouse, they know how we interact, or if it was a military member. You had to take it up a notch. At that point you had to use your rank, because when you interact with people --

Say I pulled over a Lieutenant Colonel, or a retiree that was an officer, I have to turn on that switch to be like professional, courteous, kind and understanding, but at the same time I have the authority. Civilians were like scared out of their boots, we just walking up to them and they were freaking out like this is a military cop. He means business. This is not some state highway 00:40:00patrolman. They treated us like we were like above the state highway patrol. No, the state highway patrol was above us; they ran the state. I mean, we were just -- Our zone was this big and they had the entire state. When you figure, when we interacted with civilians we sometimes got scared people, or we'd get people like, "You're a military cop, you can't touch me." "Listen, buddy, you're in our jurisdiction, and secondly you've got a warrant for your arrest, so you're coming with me, whether you like it or not."

It was just simple little things like that. We got in a couple scuffles. I arrested people for drugs, tons of thefts, vehicle accidents I had to deal with all the time. It was just a never-ending -- Every day was a new adventure, being a cop. You figure, 30,000 civilians and a base that covers almost 3 counties and 144 miles concurrent jurisdiction outside the fence lines, not to include everything that was inside that we had to deal with. I mean, it was a big job, 00:41:00and on a given day there was only 30 of us cops to guard that entire base. It's kind of like you're stretched thin and you're responding to stuff all day long. There was never a day that went by without something to do.

BB: That was my final question leading towards active duty. What was your military occupational specialty and did you receive advanced training after basic training?

TO: Good question. With advanced training, yes. After tech school, you're constantly learning. You're constantly excelling, growing, learning new things. When I first got back home from tech school, we went -- My base, Springfield, was going on a training mission and we had gone to Savannah, Georgia. The entire base went with the aircraft, and that's where we went, literally 2, 3 days after I got home. I did end processing and boom, there we go, down to Savannah.

While I was down there, I talked to the Chief and a couple other guys that knew what was going on. At that time we were in a war, we were in wartime. A lot of the active duty was deploying out of Wright Patterson because my job specialty was -- The Air Force code specialty for it is 3POX1, which is a Security Forces Journeyman. I was always like taught -- That was my job specialty, that's what I was taught in tech school and that's what I did. That's what you're sworn to do for 6 years. This is your job and this is how you're going to do it, unless you screw it up and get kicked out or something else happens to you. For the first 6 years, I mean I worked starting out working at the gate. Then I was a gate guard for a while. I started there in, I think early 2004 late 2003, once I was 00:43:00finished up with all my schooling.

I was very young, wet behind the ears, didn't know what I was really doing but the training there was once or twice a week. Your days off, you were training, or you get instruction while you were lunch shift, about how to do your job. You carried a gun, you had a primary and secondary weapon and you had handcuffs, you had mace, you gave authorization to allow somebody in. Your main job was to support entry and exit of the installation; that was your job.

The professionalism switch had to click on real quick, because you got people coming in the gate, their first perception of what this base is is the look on your face, or how courteous you are. Their entire day may be impacted by how you interacted with them in the morning when they came on with their coffee and 00:44:00their car and you had to be professional and kind even though you were standing out there freezing your butt off in the cold winter. You had to still put a smile on your face and say, "Thank you, have a nice day."

That has kind of changed, and it's kind of like the old way we did things. We used to wave traffic on the base. As long as you had a sticker, it was doing this all day long, saluting, waving traffic in. You work in 22B off at 675, that's 2, 3,000 cars. You're out there in lanes, just constantly out there for 45 minutes to an hour directing traffic. I was proud of what I did and I enjoyed what I did, I enjoyed interacting with people. The more I got to do it, the better off I did, and they seen that and by the time I reached senior airman, they're like, "Okay, time for a little bit of road time, getting in the car and riding around with the patrolman." I got the chance to do that, and they flip-flop you back and forth, get you a little bit of training here and there.

I wanted to be bike patrol, I wanted to do the canine stuff, but they were like, "You're guard, you can't." I wanted to deploy with half these guys, but they wouldn't let me, like you're stuck here at this base and this is what you're going to do. I was like cool, I don't care. I made the best of my time there at Wright Patterson. I got to become patrolman, they seen how I worked, how dedicated I was to the job, and then I was the supervisor that was going around checking on people, making sure that they were doing their jobs, conducting training, because I'd been there for so many years that I had gotten into everything where I knew everything. I knew the entire base, I knew people, I knew where to find people.

These poor younger airmen were like cycling out every 6 months to deploy and come back home and wait 6 months and deploy again. They never really got that home time to be able to develop themselves, because when you're -- You've got to figure, you're at home, you're basically like a, you're a military cop, you're 00:46:00like a civilian cop but you're a military cop, and you wear this uniform, and you put on this type of gear. Then we're going to pull that away from you, hold on a minute, we're not going to do law enforcement anymore. Now we're going to deploy you and give you a totally different set of gear and tell you to go fight the bad guys over here, and now you're going to be air base ground defense troop, where you're not going to do any type of law type stuff, but you're going to do patrols and you're going to guard an installation. You're still going to do entry control, and you're still going to do your patrols but you're not allowed to enforce any host nation law -- You're only allowed to enforce host nation laws. You've got to kind of flip your mind, okay I'm no longer in charge here, but yet I have bodies, personnel and property to protect.

It's a very hard transition these kids are going through. They get burnt out in 4 to 6 years, like I'm not doing this any more. The turnover rate for losing people was huge, because that -- That Air Force [specialty 00:47:00], because 00:47:00it's probably one of the toughest in the Air Force, physically and mentally. Yet it's the lowest, one of the lowest scores -- The people who score lowest are the ones who get Security Forces.

Yet it takes so much mind power. You've got a gun, you've got to know all these laws, you've got to perform well. It's like -- We don't get the gratitude or the appreciation for the amount of crap we have to deal with. The suicide rates in Security Forces are high. The divorce rates in Security Forces are high. I was like, I'll be damned if I'm ever one of those statistics, because I've seen guys go before me. There's a guy that killed himself over there because of financial issues, and his wife was going to leave him. It was tragic. I had to go arrest some of my friends because of the stuff that they were doing. People were doing drugs, trying to cope. That is very tragic.

The experience over there was broad, but I tried to do my part and help out wherever I could because I understood the struggle. I hadn't experienced it myself quite yet. I hadn't gone through what I've been through quite yet, but I'd seen the struggles of others, and I would say, "You know what? I'm not going to let one of my brothers suffer and let him fall." You see it, you take action. You support them, you lift them up, you talk to them.

Then I got this really cool job within Security Forces. It's working in supply. In supply, there's different types of, like Deployment Manager and Material Manager. They buy, purchase all the equipment, like your supply for the entire squadron. For deployments, for vehicle equipment, for personal law enforcement 00:49:00equipment, we housed everything at that squadron. Well, we also had a lot of vehicles and we had 28 vehicles there. I, there was -- It's Vehicle Control Officer. You're in charge of maintaining the vehicle fleet. When you've got a bunch of 18 year old males, that that's not their car, what do you think they do with these things? They abuse the crap out of them and they don't care. Throwing stuff in and out of them, running their guns down the side of them, scratching them, rolling them, wrecking them, jumping them. You imagine these -- It's like a never-ending job.

Anyway, I said, "I want to interview for this job, I really want this job." I remember riding in this vehicle fleet thinking I have a passion for vehicles, that was one of my things growing up, I just loved cars and trucks and everything else. You know appreciated -- My grandfather was the one that showed me appreciation for vehicles because he had like 15 classic cars growing up, and I'm just like wow, this is awesome. I grow this appreciation for things like 00:50:00that, I'm like it might not be a talking human or whatever, but it's a piece of equipment that services us, we're going to service them. I treated it like it was my little, my family, like these are my vehicles, I'm going to take good care of them, at the expense of Uncle Sam obviously, they're not going to be out of my personal pocket.

I turned -- They said, "There's no way, Ogden, you're going to turn this into anything." I said, "Oh watch me." I always use the paraphrase you can't polish a turd. Well, this program was a turd when I got it, and I went through and I changed everything, I rewrote my policies, I did everything my supervisor asked me to do and then I did some other things he didn't ask me to do. I got in a lot of trouble for it, but after I went into his office and explained myself he was usually very forgiving, like, "Okay, I can understand your purpose."

I was always out to save them money. Instead of sending out a car to be stripped 00:51:00down and paying thousands upon thousands of dollars to have all the equipment torn out of it, all the stickers torn off of it, this car had to be declassified and sent back for an auction sale, but you couldn't even -- You weren't supposed to tell it was a cop car before, so you had to turn it back into original car, that way they can sell it to the general populace. You've got to take everything out and clean it. I'm like, we're spending $4,000.00 on one sedan? I was like, hold on a minute. Buy me an air compressor and buy me these grinders, and buy me some solution and all you're paying for is man hours, and that's nothing out of Uncle Sam's pocket because I'm here getting paid anyway.

They bought me all the equipment I needed, I knew how to do everything. We'd pay to have the cars built and the lettering put on by these companies, but it saved the squadron over $120,000.00 a year by me doing this. I came up with the 00:52:00spreadsheet and I showed the Commander and he said, "Well why haven't we been doing this for years?" He's like, "I love you Ogden, you're not going anywhere." We did things for each other. The Commander supported what we did and he liked the fact that we were saving money, I was doing the stuff. They seen how hard I was working, because I'd do like 2 or 3 cars, like when it was time to swap vehicles? I was doing 2, 3 cars a week by myself. That's a lot of work. I was working 12-hour days pretty much.

We had a ROD squad, is what we called it: relieved of duty. These are kids that got in trouble for doing something stupid and they would send them over to supply because we were always behind in our work. We always had deployments coming in, deployments going out, there was tons of gear that had to be gone through and re-sorted and cleaned and everything. Then stuff had to be prepped and ready for the next team to go out. We were, we didn't have the manpower to 00:53:00do all this stuff. They'd send the ROD squad over, and these were all guys that had been in trouble, were going to be kicked out, and had a bad attitude.

They'd send them over to me and they would come with their attitudes, and I'd look right at them and say, "Listen. I'm not here to punish you, I'm here to make you work and you will do what I tell you to." At that point, I had never really taken any full on leadership of anybody to where I was really mentoring as much as I thought I was going to have to with these guys, but it really kind of was like, okay, now it's time to put on the NCO shoes. It's time to instruct these guys, it's time to do the right thing, because I was always in a kind of a leader, role model for everybody, even in tech school. I was a rope. I drove the fla- I didn't drive, I marched the flags to and from. I never gave up that rope because I was never a quitter. I was never born a quitter, nor will I ever give up on anything easily.

At that point, I was like I'm not going to give up on these kids either. They understand that they were probably going to get kicked out or they were being reprimanded and they're angry. My job is not to further punish them anymore, my job's just to enforce -- Hey, this is a little bit of discipline. It's physical discipline, but what's better? To get talked to nicely, get treated like a human being, yes you might have been told to do something but how tough is this? Usually --

This is a good supervisor and this is what one of my supervisors always told me, is that if you go and you do that with them, he'd say, "All right, Airman Green, we're going to go out here and we have to dig all these holes." If you say the word we instead of saying the word you -- Like you got out there and you dig those holes right now, I'm going to go back and sit at my desk. That kid going to want to go out there and do that? Heck no. I go out there and say, "Airman Green, we're going to go out here and we're going to do this together, and I'm going to work hand in hand beside you because you're going to help me, I'm going 00:55:00to help you"? It keeps the team mind concept, it keeps him working because I'm there with him, and if you're going to instruct somebody to do something or show them how to do something, maybe they don't even know. Do it right along side them, that way you know that the productivity that you're telling them to perform is going to get done right, and you're not going to have to ask them 2, 3 times.

That was a philosophy that was developed in me early on, if you're going to do something you do it with somebody else. All these kids came to me, I call them kids because they were all young, 18, 19, 20 years old. I was like, "All right, here's what we're going to do today guys. We got 6,000 cones that we have to mark SFS on. These are our cones, we don't want civil engineering to take them. They're to go out to all of our gates." We used to steal CE's all the time, and they used to get mad at us. We're like okay, we bought our own cones, we're going to label them ourselves.

We made all these little forms and everything, we sat them all down, we lined them up in a row and everybody was in there spray painting. Well, there was one young man, Airman Green, who had gotten in a lot of trouble, was faced with court-martial unless he straightened his act. He liked to listen to satanic type music and he liked to cuss a lot, he was a very angry young man. Well, when he got sent back to me I could tell that he was probably going to be one of the toughest I had to deal with. I was like this kid's got a crazy side to him that -- I was like, "Listen," I said, "You can be back here in this bay, you can listen to your music, you can cuss and holler and scream all you want. Do not come at me, do not touch me, listen to what I have to say. If I have to repeat myself, we're going to have problems." I said, "You need to drop your attitude. Don't mouth off to me, otherwise, there'll be more paperwork. And it's not going to come from me, it's going to come from my supervisor."

I went into my office and told my supervisor what I told Airman Green. I said, "Sir, I'm trying to work with him." I was like, "I know there's protocol for everything in the military," but I said, "Let this kid go back there and do his thing and let him calm down. He needs some exercise, he needs some time to free his mind, let's just say." I remember my boss looking at me, and he was like, "Why?" I was like, "Sir, just hear me out." I was like, "If he becomes a nuisance or becomes a problem, you come to me, I'll handle it." He's like, "All right. I trust everything else you've done Tyler so go right for it."

I got this kid to do everything he asked me to. I think he got a little too many paint fumes in the air that day. I was working on something for one of the cars, he came up behind me and he put me in this choke hold. I didn't even see him coming. Freaked me out, I mean I'm sitting here working with intricate 00:58:00electronic stuff because these cars, they shake, they jostle everything. One of the boards broke and I was in there hot soldering everything back together to make it work again, on one of the control boxes for the overhead lights. I'm working with this thing and he comes over and puts me in this choke hold, and I was like -- Instantly, my natural reaction was to fight back, because he went like this and just put me in -- I reached, first I wanted to go throw him. That didn't work, he leaned me back further and I was like -- I didn't know who it was. Then I heard him talk and I was like oh hell no, I told you not to put your hands on me.

I don't know why he felt the need to want to put his hands on me. I punched him twice in his temple, like this behind my head, until he let go and he fell to the ground. I turned around and I stood over top of him and I had my fist drawn, and I said, "If you ever do that again," I was like, "You're lucky I don't put you in jail right now for putting your hands on an NCO. Get up and face me right 00:59:00now." He got up in front of my face and I was like, "Why did you put your hands on me? I have every right -- " He said, "Why did you hit me so hard?" I said, "Because I told you, don't put your hands on me." I was like, "Respect me and I'm going to respect you, but you ever put your hands on me again, I'll hit you twice as hard."

At that point he looked at me, he started like crying, and I was like, "What is wrong with you? What is your major malfunction?" I was like, "Get out of my face." He came back like 3 hours later, and he's like, "I am so sorry. I did not mean to do that. I don't know what I was thinking." I was like, "You know what?" I was like, "I've tried very hard with you to get some help for you, to help you out and guide you in the right direction," but I said, "I feel like I'm failing you." He looks at me and he's like, "What do you mean?" I was like, "I feel like I'm not doing the right thing with you." I was like, "I want to see you succeed Chris, I don't want to see you fail. I'm not here help you fail. I'm here to 01:00:00watch you succeed, because if you are going to get kicked out, what are you going to do when you get out of the service? Do you have any direction in life? Do you have anything? Do you have any goals?"

This is where I started thinking about -- Man, if I got out, where the heck would I go? What would I do? How would I take care of myself? It's scary. It's like, okay, where do I start looking for a job? What type of job would I want? Where would I go? Okay, I have a house. Great, but I have a mortgage, means I need to continue to work and pay my bills. I really started thinking hard about these kids that were just dismissed. I said, "Chris, do you really want to get kicked out?" "No Sargent Ogden." "Well then you need to figure out what it is that makes you right in your head, so that way you can stay in and finish out the rest of your years." I was like, "How many years you got in?" "2." He's like, "How many years you got in Sargent Ogden?" I said, "Oh I've got almost" -- Let's see, at that time, I think I had like 8 or 9. I was already through my 01:01:00first enlistment. I was like, "I don't even have to be here right now. This is by choice, because I want to, because I love my job and I love my country and I love to serve."

I was like, "Where's your ambition? Where's your drive? What drives you to want to stay here?" He was like, "Nothing, I hate the service." I said, "Why do you hate the service so much Chris?" He's like, "Because of everything. People hate me." I said, "People are going to hate you no matter what." I said, "Your attitude sucks." I said, "You change your attitude, I guarantee people will like you better. They'll treat you right." I said, "I'm not here to treat you any different. I like who you are, but you're going to have to change." When he started going through and doing his thing -- At the later part of that year is when I got dismissed from that job. The Commander, they swapped commanders and they said, "Everybody who's back office go to flight," because flight was screwed up bad and they knew that everybody good was in the back office. All the 01:02:00NCOs do a hot swap, which irritated me because I'd been in that job almost 2 years. And I was like man, all this hard work I put into this, somebody else is going to destroy it.

After that, Chris deployed. I said, "You know what? If you really want to stay in" -- I talked to Sargent Murray about Chris, and I said, "Sir I think he wants to change. I just think people just don't like him but he needs an opportunity to show people that he's going to change." They talked to the Commander, they put him on a 365 day deployment with the Army in Afghanistan, and that's where he went for a year. He got his stripe back, he stayed in, and when he got back home I saw a Staff Sargent stripe on his shoulder, and I thought my God. This young man, he succeeded.

He contacted me on Facebook one day and he said, "Thank you." I said, "Now you feel prouder about yourself? Because you succeeded." He said, "Yeah, I feel better because I feel like somebody cared about me. So thank you." The pride in 01:03:00me was just like, oh my gosh. I finally touched somebody that made production with their life. Made it a story and finished out his 6 years and got out under honorable conditions. I'm like, "Chris, you owe it to yourself now, dude. Go out there and do something great with your life. Don't let this be the stopping point. If you would've got out under general discharge or other than honorable, you wouldn't be able to find a job. Come in, do this for yourself man." He just got married last October, October 3. I called him and said, "I'm very proud of you." He lives in the same town. He lives right down the road from me.

It just goes to show you what types of impacts can happen over life that even the smallest bit of interaction can make a lasting lifetime impression. With 01:04:00everybody that has impacted upon my life and my career, I've used it to benefit others. I know, I'm sorry, I went off on that, but that was a very proud time in my day and --