Story by: Spc. Thomas Day
FORT BLISS, Texas -- The civilian lives for one squadron of Reserve Marines are taking a two-week "break" for Roving Sands 2005, a joint exercise underway this week at Fort Bliss.
For these two weeks, the part-time Marines dust off their boots, trim up their haircuts, and train for the day they get their mobilization orders -- and it starts at the top.
Joseph Sheehan, a city councilmember in his hometown of Green, Ohio, has become Marine Corps Lt. Col. Joseph Sheehan, the commander of the Marine Air Control Squadron-23 (MACS-23) out of Aurora, Colo.
Sheehan's squadron is the only Marine Corps Reserve element in the Denver area. In Roving Sands 2005, their training is hands on. They set up their massive equipment, including a TPS 39 Radar Satellite, into the desert environment of Fort Bliss.
Sheehan is the Regional Air Defense Coordinator for the Roving Sands exercise, reporting to U.S. Army, U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force officers as well as other Coalition partners at the Multi-National Command Center at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
"Our ability to do interoperability is very robust," he said. It will need to be. While the MACS-23 has not been deployed as a unit to Iraq (a certain joint-service environment), a number of Marines in his squadron are Iraq war veterans.
Indeed, Sheehan has already shuttled a number of 12-member teams to Iraq. "We just had Marines get back just last week," he said.
While in the United States, the MACS-23 mission is to train and help out wherever the Corps needs them. From September to December of 2004, Sheehan dispatched teams to serve in military funerals for Marines lost in combat in Iraq.
"As a commander, I never thought I"d have to do that," he said. Simply put, their second jobs may interfere with their civilian and family lives.
His Marines are firefighters, students, mortgage brokers, "doubledogs" -- as Sheehan refers to his Reserve duty Marines. Sheehan is not alone in his unit in this dual life of public service. His executive officer, Maj. Arturo Hernandez, is a U.S. Attorney in Cleveland.
A number of MACS-23 Marines pay a price to serve in the unit, quite literally. Both Sheehan and Hernandez regularly fly from Ohio to Colorado, paying their own way, to report to their monthly drill exercises. One of Sheehan's enlisted soldiers commutes from her home outside of Camp Pendleton, Ca. -- often spending more to commute to her monthly exercises than what she gets paid from the Corps.
Others have paid a price in forgoing a week of classwork. Capt. Matt Koren, a law student at the University of Denver, brought a stack of books with him to the field. He
was fortunate enough to have his spring break coinciding with the training exercise, allowing him only to miss one week of school.
Student/Marine Lance Cpl. Josh Jelosek also found himself in the same position.
Jelosek, a junior undergraduate student at Colorado State University and an Aviation Operations Specialist with the MACS-23, found his professors extremely supportive.
"They just gave me whatever time I'll miss added on to my due dates and tests," Jelosek said.
And then there are stories like the one of Sgt. Aaron Timothy, who left his job as a firefighter in Berthoud, Col., to train with the MACS-23. "As a firefighter, I save lives. Here I coordinate to train and lead Marines.
In both jobs, the training is always constant. You never know when you're going to have to use it."
In April, most of the MACS-23 Marines will return to their homes in Colorado. Sheehan will return to Ohio, serving his last year of his second four-year term on the Green, Ohio, city council.
He is prohibited from running for a third consecutive term, but has not ruled out running for another elected office.
"Maybe in a later part of my life."
In the mean time, he continues in the Marine Corps Reserves, his 26th year of service.