|
Hard Hat Heroes Profiled
A chance to honor AGC members who
have served overseas
By Mark J. Shaw, Editor-in-Chief
We all know the grim numbers from the
war in Iraq:
> More than 2,800 American soldiers
killed since the 2003 invasion,
> More than 9,500 American soldiers
wounded,
> 105 Americans killed in October
2006, the highest monthly total in more than two years,
> At least 130,000 Iraqi civilians
killed so far, with estimates as high as 150,000.
The deepening sectarian violence has
pushed the country into a civil war that has spawned more
than 100 incidents of violence a day. The war has had a palpable
impact on national and international politics and is usually
cited as the main reason why Republicans lost big on election
day.
None of these totals include the losses
in Afghanistan, in what has become a nearly forgotten piece
of the war effort.
But there are many war stories that no
one hears about, especially the daily successes and small
victories won by the people who work the front lines to create,
repair and protect everything from power plants and water
supplies to new bridges.
Many of those people are not professional
soldiers. They have spent their careers doing other things,
like driving trucks, installing HVAC systems and managing
construction projects. These are names and faces we seldom
see, but they are making a big contribution to the future
of Iraq and our relationship with the Iraqi people.
In this issue, Constructor profiles several
of those people from our industry. These soldiers have served
overseas in either Iraq or Afghanistan, in a variety of ways.
At home, they all work for AGC-member firms, carving out time
for military service from their busy professional and personal
lives. We learned about them by surveying AGC firms nationwide
and asking them to send us information on their soldier-employees.
Not surprisingly, we heard from many more firms about their
people than we had room to include here. Here we offer a glimpse
at a handful of AGC members who have served overseas and were
willing to share some of those experiences with our readers.
You will read about Staff Sergeant Oscar
Rodriguez, who served nine years in the Texas Army National
Guard earlier in his life, then decided to rejoin his old
unit within a month after 9/11. Normally an operations manager
with Ewing Construction in McAllen, Texas, Rodriguez became
part of a scout unit that patrolled the local towns and villages
west of Falluja.
A new father himself, Rodriguez says
he was particularly fond of helping Iraqi children. He returned
home safely to his family about a year ago, "with a greater
appreciation of the daily things people take for granted,"
he says. "A year in Iraq changed my outlook on life.
I'm a better person today."
Dan Welch of Topeka, Kan., and Staff
Sergeant Larry Porter of Vancouver, Wash., say they understood
the immensity of their missions. "We had so much to do
and so little time to do it," Welch says. "We needed
to develop their infrastructure, their oil pipeline capacity,
their refinery capacity, their electrical capacity."
Others, like helicopter pilot David Greene
of Vergennes, Vt., did not make it home. Greene was shot and
killed by small arms fire while providing cover during an
evacuation of injured Marines.
Still, you will hear from these "hard
hat heroes" the same things you hear from many career
soldiers: They were simply doing their jobs.
That's why many of these men went to
war, and that's why we're proud to help tell their stories
here.
|
