Page 62 - Senior Link Magazine Winter 2022 - Online Magazine

Garry and Donna Wright
he US military helps
maintain peace and
Tstability in regions critical
to our interests. Southern
Command is the arm of the US
Army responsible for operations
for Central and South America.
That mission has taken Garry
Wright all over Latin America,
as well as to Alaska, the
Pentagon, the halls of Congress,
and even Lubbock’s Estacado
High School.
The career soldier was born in
1944 in Stockton, California to
Glenn and Doris Wright. Glenn
served in the Army Air Corps in
WWII as a navigator on a B-29
and took part in the bombing
of Okinawa airfields in 1945
in support of the American
landing. The family moved
near Oxford, Colorado when
Garry was six. He attended a
two-room schoolhouse for four
62 Lubbock Senior Link
Wherever Duty Calls
by Larry Williams & Jane Bromley
Sometimes the road was paved
and sometimes not.”
Garry was assigned to the
8th Special Forces Group,
who had helped capture Che
Guevara in 1967. Vietnam
was winding down, but Latin
America was filled with rebels
and terrorists. “I became the
Book Officer handling supplies
years. For middle school, he and equipment for the mobile
rode a school bus 21 miles each training teams. After being
way to get to “nearby” Ignacio. promoted to Captain, I ran
At Durango High School, he Group S-4.” The couple spent
participated in track and 4H, four years in Panama, where
winning many ribbons for his their sons, Geoffrey and Jason,
pigs, sheep, and rabbits. were born.
“After graduation in 1962, I went Garry’s next assignment was
to Ft. Lewis College in Durango, at Ft. Lee. Virginia, where he
then transferred to Wayland commanded the HQ Company.
Baptist in Plainview, Texas, “I had immediate court martial
where I received a fantastic authority from Norfolk, Virginia
education. As a Junior, I worked to Washington, D.C. and
as a youth pastor at First Baptist oversaw some very complex
Church in Post, where I met cases.” Garry’s leadership skills
my future wife, Donna Rudd. were becoming more evident.
In 1968, I joined the Army
Reserves. After basic training “I was accepted into the Foreign
and AIT, I went to Ft. Benning, Area Officer Program and sent
Georgia for OCS and Airborne to Texas Tech for a master’s
training, and then to Ft. Bragg, degree in Latin America Studies.
North Carolina for Special After that, I was sent back to
Forces training.” Ft. Bragg, then to the Defense
Language Institute in Monterey,
Garry and Donna married on California, and the Mexican
Christmas Day, 1969. The trip Superior War College in Mexico.
to Garry’s first active-duty I was assigned to the Defense
station at Ft. Gulick, Colon, Attaché office in Mexico City.
Panama turned out to be quite The smog was so bad back then,
the adventure. Donna said, the only time you could see the
“We decided to drive. I had a blue sky was when the factories
1968 VW Bug, and Garry had a would shut down at Christmas.”
30-day leave, so after leaving Ft.
Bragg and stopping over in Post, His next stop was at the Defense
we traveled through Mexico Intelligence Agency at the
via the Pan American Highway. Pentagon where he was the desk