Photo By Nell King | Marine Corps Col. Andrew M. Regan, commander for Headquarters and Service Battalion,...... read more read more
JOINT BASE MYER-HENDERSON HALL, Va. - Since taking over as commanding officer for Headquarters & Service Battalion, Headquarters Marine Corps, Henderson Hall on July 10, Col. Andrew M. Regan has been getting to know the men and women he is now serving with.
“These Marines know the service they are providing to support Marines wherever they are in the National Capital Region,” he said during a recent interview the Pentagram. “I see a bunch of dedicated Marines who just want to do their job, but at the same time grow professionally and embrace the institution.”
During a recent meeting with his Marines, Regan said he told them that, “If you want the best out of me, I need the best out of you. I need you to pressurize the system.”
Regan said that by pressurizing the system he means a Marine should be pushing the Marine ahead of him.
“Good leaders feed off quality Marines,” he said. “Marines shouldn’t give those above them any excuses to not be the best.”
Regan called the joint base environment a “refreshing one” to be around on a daily basis.
“I couldn’t be more impressed with the Marines,” he said. “They know what their roles and responsibilities are and they exercise initiative. You can’t ask for more than that.”
Regan said one of his prime objectives as Henderson Hall commander will be to make sure the services it provides for active duty and retired Marines and their families throughout the National Capital Region are relevant to where they are in both their professional and personal lives.
“I want to focus the MCCS (Marine Corps Community Services) side of the house on those issues,” he said.
Regan also said he wants to make sure there is depth to the relationship that exists between the Army and Marine Corps on the joint base.
“We complement our Army peers on the installation and they complement us,” he said. “While each service has unique ways of doing things, there is commonality.”
A path toward service
Regan, a native of Katonah, New York, holds a bachelor’s of arts degree in economics from the University of Rochester and was commissioned through the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps in 1991.
“I knew I wanted to do military service,” he said, pointing to his family’s history of service. Regan’s father served in the National Guard; one of his sisters attended West Point, while his other sister was in ROTC. A cousin and uncle of Regan’s were also career Marines. And while he hoped to attend a military academy for college, Regan said he was not academically competitive enough to get in.
“The only institution to reach out and embrace me was the Marine Corps,” he said. “I always felt drawn to the lineage, the ethos of the Marine Corps. I always felt it was the Marine Corps who was looking at who I was as a person and what I could contribute.”
Regan said he “scraped past 1,000” on his Scholastic Aptitude Test and had a meeting with then-Maj. John M. Paxton, who was the commanding officer of the New York Recruiting District and is now the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps.
During that meeting, Regan said Paxton told him he was going to be a “tough sell” to enter the NROTC because he didn’t have the necessary academic “oomph” required to become a Marine officer. That didn’t stop the pair from talking for about an hour, according to Regan.
“I just felt he dug into who I was as a person,” continued Regan.
At the end of the interview, Paxton told Regan he would rank him as the No. 1 candidate coming out of the district.
“I felt this guy was showing some confidence in me as an individual,” said Regan. “When someone does that, especially at that young age, it means something.”
Regan ended up receiving a ROTC scholarship and attending the University of Rochester. Regan said there were seven members of his class that went into the Marine Corps. They all made it their careers and have remained lifelong friends.
“You never lose that connection,” he said. “They know you the best. They see you in your formative years. They’ve seen you act like a moron, but they still embrace who you are.”
Regan has served at all three Marine Expeditionary Forces and in all elements of the Marine Air Ground Task Force and holds multiple graduate degrees.
| Date Taken: | 09.03.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 09.03.2015 16:44 |
| Story ID: | 175207 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE MYER-HENDERSON HALL, VA, US |
| Hometown: | KATONAH, NY, US |
| Web Views: | 44 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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