Photo By DAVID LOGSDON | Col. Anthony Kazor, Garrison Commander, Fort Gordon, Ga. bends down to greet World War...... read more read more
He’s the son and son-in-law of Army officers and married to a former Army officer, so you could say the Army runs deep in his veins.
Being the Garrison Commander of Fort Gordon, Col. Anthony Kazor is responsible for a community of approximately 20,000 who live and work here. Like the mayor of any small town, he ensures roads are passable and electricity is on, but he has the added responsibility of ensuring America’s future cyber and signal soldiers have functional living and training spaces with food in their bellies and places to exercise. And he does that through sunshine and disaster, with a limited budget and aging infrastructure.
Originally taking command of Fort Eisenhower in July 2024, it wasn’t his first encounter with the five-star general’s memory. As an Army brat at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he attended Eisenhower Elementary in 6th grade and this is where his future was sealed. One of his classmates was a young girl named Katie, now Katie Kazor. They attended the same school until junior high when his father retired. They didn’t see each other again until they were sophomores at Creighton University, both in Army ROTC.
“I originally had an Air Force ROTC scholarship for architecture at the University of Nebraska, Omaha,” Kazor said. “But I really wanted to become a doctor, and the Army offered me a three-year scholarship in biology at Creighton.”
Although his path didn’t result in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck, he graduated and was commissioned as 74A, a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear officer, or CBRN. He traded in the white coat for a hazmat suit and a gas mask and spent the past 20+ years protecting troops from the dangers of chemical warfare and assisting in detecting those who want to proliferate it.
Along the way and by his side is his wife Katie who joined in his career path as an Army Nurse, like her mother before her. After taking a break from nursing to raise their two children, Katie returned to the workforce as a software consultant for hospitals around the country.
When the couple married after she finished school and he completed the Basic Course, they were excited to begin their Army journey with an assignment to Germany.
“We had no kids and you either want to do Europe with no kids or when they’re old enough to remember.”
The Army had other ideas for the young Kazors as their orders were changed from alpine getaways to a desolate desert oasis at Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas more than 9 hours from the more populated Fort Hood. It could have been the first and last station for the couple, but they were called to continue a life of service in the military.
Earning his degree in biology made for an interesting career as a chemical officer. His journey for the past 20+ years has provided opportunities only available in the Army. Especially his tour at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland.
“APG was an interesting assignment,’” he recalled. It’s one of the early birthplaces of the chemical corps and there’s still a lot of remnants, especially on Edgewood Arsenal.” Edgewood has been an active chemical testing site since 1917.
“That was exciting to go see and be a part of,” he said. “It’s where I did my technical escort time. In the chemical corps, you have your recon, decon, and technical escort Soldiers bridged the gap between munitions and site exploitation. They could escort chemical, biological, nuclear surety material and they could go out into the field and conduct field confirmatory analysis for the presence of CBRN materials on a battlefield.”
It was good preparation for his deployment to Afghanistan in 2009. Although his first combat deployment was to Iraq in 2003, it was with a Patriot Battalion and five months after arriving, the air and missile threat was no longer a concern, and he redeployed.
“I deployed out of the 22nd Chemical Battalion to Afghanistan where we were doing IED exploitation, forensic exploitation,” he said. “It is one of those rare opportunities you get in the Army where you are doing something that is not completely your job, but you do it and it turns out to be an awesome experience.”
During this deployment, the exploitation efforts helped the Aghan ministry successfully convict bomb makers using evidence collected by U.S. and Afghan forces together to convict somebody in their court system.
“The weapons technical intelligence teams and [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] teams across the battlespace would bring in IED materials and we would do the forensics exploitation then be able to link the network together, the bomb making network,” he recalled. “We had their prosecutors observe our processes and we trained them to successfully do the prosecution. It was pretty amazing.”
He was attending War College in 2023 when he learned he was pulled forward for command. Originally slated for a chemically aligned command in 2025, he eagerly accepted the chance to lead the Garrison at Fort Gordon and took command in July 2024.
It has been a learning curve.
Shortly after taking command, he lost his Deputy Garrison Commander to a professional opportunity and within two months witnessed the most devasting Hurricane to fall in Augusta in recent history. Couple these challenges with an aging infrastructure, multiple construction projects and two of the most sensitive operational commands in the nation operating in the town where you just became Mayor with no time to learn.
“During my previous years in the Army, the garrison was an activity that I’ve taken for granted,” he explained. “I used the services, sent soldiers to get services and programs the garrison offers but never understood everything that happens behind the scenes to keep a garrison running. It has been the most eye-opening experience.”
Kazor's recent experience has provided more insight into his father’s struggles in his later military career and has provided many topics of discussion during their weekly calls.
He credits his success here to “a team of extremely dedicated professionals that work behind the scenes to make sure our mission partners and the CCoE can train and forge and project power.”
He hopes to stabilize Fort Gordon for the long run to provide those critical services and programs that the mission partners and the CCoE need to be successful.
Even though he is the son of a career Army officer, his original intent was for the Army to pay for his schooling and maybe do eight years. However, the Army life kept getting more interesting and more rewarding.
“The value of people and the teams I’ve been a part of has been absolutely amazing and the people are the reason that I continue to serve,” he reflected. “No matter what your job is, it’s the people that make all the difference and it’s the people that get the job done and the mission accomplished.”
And who knows, maybe he will get that tour to Germany yet.
| Date Taken: | 08.13.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 08.13.2025 17:22 |
| Story ID: | 545556 |
| Location: | FORT GORDON, GEORGIA, US |
| Hometown: | FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS, US |
| Hometown: | OMAHA, NEBRASKA, US |
| Web Views: | 47 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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