Remembering Vice Admiral John Mateczun–Navy Psychiatrist, Visionary and Stalwart Leader of Military Medicine (1946-2022)

Photo By André B. Sobocinski, Historian | On November 7, 2022, Vice Adm. John Mateczun, the former Commander of Joint Task Force National Capital Region Medical and Deputy Surgeon General of the Navy died. He was 76.  

FALLS CHURCH, VA, UNITED STATES

11.14.2022

Story by André B. Sobocinski, Historian 

U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery

On November 7, 2022, Vice Adm. John Mateczun, the former Commander of Joint Task Force National Capital Region Medical and Deputy Surgeon General of the Navy died. He was 76.

Vice Adm. Mateczun charted a military career like none other.

Over the course of 38 years in uniform, he served as an U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technician with two combat tours in Vietnam (1967-1968, 1969-1970).

After obtaining a commission in the Navy Medical Corps in 1977 he rose to the rank of Vice Admiral becoming one of a select few non-Surgeons General and— to date—the only Navy psychiatrist to wear 3-stars.

And in 2007, Vice Adm. Mateczun was selected to lead the historic merger between the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC)—a job that was once likened to combining the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox ball clubs and renaming Fenway Park “Derek Jeter Stadium.”

Vice Adm. Mateczun began his journey in Albuquerque, N.M., the youngest of two sons born to Alfred Joseph Mateczun and Margaret Costello Mateczun. Growing up near Kirtland Air Force Base, and being the son of a Navy veteran, Mateczun and his brother Al were, as he later put it, “acculturated to the idea of military service.” Al attended the Air Force Academy and became a pilot in 1964. John briefly followed brother Al to the Air Force Academy, but not being “enamored with the engineering-centric curriculum” decided to leave school. He enlisted in the Army in 1966 with the expectation of fighting in Vietnam.

In 1967, both Mateczun brothers deployed to Vietnam—Al as an Air Force reconnaissance pilot flying RC-4C Phantoms, and John as fire control instrument repairer working with the 94th Maintenance Company in support of 25th Infantry Division in Cu Chi. The Mateczun brothers both served in theater early in 1968 during the Tet Offensive, the wide-scale offensive against United States Armed Forces and South Vietnamese Army that began on the Vietnamese Lunar New Year (Tết Nguyên Đán).

His experiences in theater inspired Mateczun to transfer ratings and become an EOD technician. He returned to Vietnam in 1969 with the 184th EOD based in Qui Nhon, Vietnam where he was tasked with clearing booby traps from strategic roads. It was an experience that proved seminal and forced him to become more reflective of risk as well as his own mortality.

“I will say that as I became more experienced in combat I started thinking about risk in a different way, and I really began to rely more on my experience, became more confident in my abilities,” recalled Mateczun in a 2019 oral history. “As I was getting into my second tour in Vietnam, I had experience. I understood how to work in the chaos of the environment, and I didn’t have as much fear of the chaos itself. Some people become immobilized by the fear of not knowing what is going to happen. But the idea is to do something, even if it’s making a choice to not do anything at that point. You have to be active in the process, otherwise the chaos envelops you.”

Vice Adm. Mateczun earned the Bronze Star for his actions in theater. After being honorably discharged as a staff sergeant in 1970 he returned to New Mexico where he completed his undergraduate degree and then attended medical school with his brother Al, recently discharged from the Air Force. At medical school the Mateczun brothers were recruited into the Navy, entering in 1977 through the Senior Medical Student Program (1915 Program).

Mateczun went through a psychiatry residency at Oakland from 1978 to 1982. He also earned a Master of Public Health from the University of California at Berkeley (1982) before being assigned to the 3rd Marine Division as assistant division surgeon and division psychiatrist.

Over the next decade Vice Adm. Mateczun served in a host of clinical roles at the National Naval Medical Center Bethesda, Md, and the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, Va. He served as Head Consultation Liaison Division, in the Department of Psychiatry and Intern Advisor, Transitional Intern Program Director in Bethesda (1983-1987). This was followed by a tour as Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Portsmouth (1987-1989).

Then as now, Portsmouth was a key base for the Special Psychiatric Rapid Intervention Team (SPRINT) program and Dr. Mateczun supported high-profile interventions with the crews of USS Bonefish (SS-582) following a deadly fire (1988), USS Iowa (BB-61) after a turret explosion (1989), as well as aboard USS Vincennes (CG-61) after it had mistakenly shot down a commercial Iranian airliner. His role in the latter intervention was later captured in the book, Storm Center: The USS Vincennes and Iran Air Flight 655: A Personal Account of Tragedy and Terrorism (1992).

Throughout his career, Dr. Mateczun always sought to expand his repertoire to better meet the challenges ahead. Although already certified as an adult psychiatrist, he passed his boards for forensic psychiatry in 1988. That same year he obtained a law degree from Georgetown University. As he put it, “Having a law degree gave me another language. I came to see law school as really akin to learning a language and learning a new culture.” And both lawyers and psychiatrists were skilled in dealing with, as he put it, “ambiguity.”

In 1991, Vice Mateczun put these “languages” to use when he was tasked with exploring problems with deployed personnel in the Gulf as a special consultant for the U.S. Marine Corps Central Command.

During the 1990s, Mateczun served as an Assistant Chief of Staff and Force Surgeon, Fleet Marine Forces, Pacific, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii (1991-1994); Chief of Staff, TRICARE Region 1, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Wash., D.C. (1994-1995); Principal Director, Clinical Services, Special Assistant to the ASD (Health Affairs); and Chief Medical Officer, TRICARE Management Activity (TMA), Office of Assistant (1995-1998).

Following tours as Commanding Officer of Naval Hospital Charleston, SC (1998-2000) and Assistant Chief of Staff, Health Care Operations, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED), Washington, D.C (2000-2001), Mateczun served as the Joint Staff Surgeon, J4, Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Pentagon, Washington, D.C. under two Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh Shelton and Gen. Richard Meyers. He was in J4 the morning of September 11th. 2001, when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

“We watched on TV [from the office] after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, and everybody was puzzled seeing it. Then a second plane,” Mateczun later recalled. “The immediate questions we were dealing with was ‘What kind of support options have we got?’ We all went to the National Military Command Center, and then there was a large explosion. The command center itself absorbed a lot of the shock, so we probably didn’t feel it as much as other people in the building did. I thought it might have been a truck bomb, but at any rate the rest of the day became an object lesson in disaster preparedness. They ordered the evacuation of the Pentagon, and those of us with clinical backgrounds started working our way to the DiLorenzo Clinic, where the initial casualties were being seen.”

Mateczun briefly served as BUMED Chief of Staff (2003) before becoming Commander, Naval Medical Center San Diego (2003-2005). This tour provided him one of the most poignant memories of his career when one of his sailors, Petty Officer Third Class Fernando A. Mendez-Aceves was killed in action in Al Anbar Province. “I had talked with him about deploying,” Mateczun remembered. “He was committed to doing his best for the Marines. He volunteered to fill a position, when somebody else was unable to go, and was killed in action taking care of casualties. . . That’s one of the prices that commanders can never forget as they get their people ready. You have to be committed yourself.”

Vice Admiral Mateczun returned to BUMED as Deputy Surgeon General in 2005. He left in 2007 to become the new Commander, Joint Task Force, National Capital Region Medical, Bethesda, MD. The position was established in response to the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) requirements in the National Capital Region (NCR). The Joint Task Force oversaw the completion of the historic merger between NNMC and WRAMC in Bethesda to form the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center—the nation’s largest military medical facility—and building what was known as the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital.

He later put the role of the Task Force in perspective by stating: [It’s] a big job, with a lot of construction, outfitting, transition planning, training and movement, and sometimes the details seem overwhelming. But when it all seems like too much, as it does on some days, we remember our focus, keeping America’s covenant with these Wounded Warriors and their families. . . we have no higher priority, and these medical construction projects are testimony to that commitment.”

In his 2019 oral history, Vice Adm. Mateczun shied away from personal legacies and instead spoke extensively about his family and their influence on him—his mother, his father, his brother Capt. (ret.) Al Mateczun, MC, USN, who served 40 years in the Air Force and Navy, his wife, Capt. (ret.) Elizabeth “Betsy” Holmes, MSC, USN, and children Laura, Adam and Erin. All of them left an indelible mark on his life, made his life all the more richer, and he credited them for their deep influence on him throughout his career, stating, “I can’t tell you how much family experiences helped in forming my own perspective. It is easy to go off on a tangent and course correction from family is essential to keeping your bearings.”

Throughout his career, regardless of the job, Vice Adm. Mateczun remained that skillful EOD tech in Vietnam—always laser-focused on the task at hand and always composed under pressure. And with his family at his side providing guidance and support, he was always able to keep his bearings straight.

Reference:
Mateczun, John, Vice Adm. Oral History. (Conducted by A.B. Sobocinski). Sessions conducted on October 18, November 13, and December 12, 2019.

• Date Taken: 11.14.2022
• Date Posted: 11.14.2022 14:49
• Story ID: 433239
• Location: FALLS CHURCH, VA, US