Media influence and the lack of a “generational commitment” to public service are clouding the perceptions of many young Americans, Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman Ramon Colon-Lopez said Aug. 1.
Nearing the end of a 33-year career spent as a special operator and senior enlisted leader in the Air Force, Colon-Lopez argued that service to one’s country offers intangible benefits young people would gravitate to—if they knew what they were.
“We are saturated in a highly negative environment,” Colon-Lopez said. “As a nation, we can help each other out and start talking about the value of service.”
The SEAC’s comments come amid polls showing declining public trust in the military and perceptions that the Department of Defense is becoming too politicized. Those perceptions appear to be taking a toll on recruiting, as the Army, Air Force, and Navy all expect to fall short of their recruitment goals for 2023.
With his retirement approaching fast in November, Colon-Lopez reflected on critical moments in his career, starting when, as a college freshman at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., he passed by a recruiting office and made a snap decision.
“I decided to just go ahead and make a U-turn, pull in, and go to a place where I could get some independence and discipline,” he said. Just one recruiter was in: an Airman.
“His name was Tech. Sgt. Derek Reason,” Colon-Lopez recalled. “This man was very genuine. He laid all the cards on the table. … I mean, he basically stood that ground so consistently, and the way he executed his duties was really what told me that I was in the right place.”
After joining the service, Colon-Lopez found a mentor in his first technical instructor who modeled the values that would become Colon-Lopez’s own personal pillars of leadership: intellect and humility.
“Another person that was very impactful in my career was my technical instructor, Staff Sgt. Tim Herrick. … He acted the part, he looked the part, and he was certainly the part,” Colon-Lopez said.
Exposure to that professional competence and Herrick’s “experiential credibility” had a deep impact on Colon-Lopez. “You need to be able to be smart enough to be able to think rationally through problems. And a lot of it is knowledge,” he noted.
However, to Colon-Lopez, that intellect and knowledge must be tempered by humility. His boot camp experience clued Colon-Lopez into the ethos of the “keen, quiet professional” that his instructors embodied.
“Get in the area, and get the experience,” he said. “You need to do things well to get that credibility. And once you have that credibility, don’t let it go to your head. Make sure that you stay humble throughout the process.”
To gain credibility and stay humble, Colon-Lopez cited the importance of another one of his “evergreen” leadership pillars: courage.
“Always put yourself out there and really test your capabilities to see what you’re capable of and what you’re not capable of,” he said.
In 1994, Colon-Lopez was serving in a logistics role at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. In his mind, though, he was ready for a different challenge.
“If I was going to be in the service, then I wanted to take the path of the warrior. And that is why, when the opportunity came up to me again, from another influential person in my career—Senior Master Sgt. Garry Lewry—he asked me if I ever thought about it.”
“It” was the opportunity to become an elite Pararescueman, or PJ.
“It’s the best decision I made in my life,” Colon-Lopez said.
Leaning on those leadership principles helped Colon-Lopez complete PJ training and advance in his career—but new challenges arose. Combat experiences left invisible marks on him and his brothers in arms.
“My spouse was noticing changes, especially after a prolonged exposure to combat,” Colon-Lopez recalled. However, his fear of appearing weak, and the culture surrounding it, held him back from seeking professional medical help.
It took a “series of missteps” to his family and career, as Colon-Lopez put it, to compel him to actually get help.
“It wasn’t until I finally got the help that I needed, that moment, that wake-up moment, that slap to the face … that said, ‘you know what, you should have done this about 15 years ago.’ And you should listen to other people again,” Colon-Lopez said. “And I felt the one thing that I hold most sacred, and that is humility. I let my ego [get in the way], because of the persona that I was supposed to live by, of a terrible warrior, that ‘we don’t get help, that help is for the weak.’ And boy was I wrong.”
Fast forward to today, and Colon-Lopez drew a connection between the military’s recruitment troubles and perceptions around mental health and the military. In a profession with the inherent risks of combat, young Americans are balking at what they perceive to be the costs of mental health that come from serving in the U.S. military, the SEAC said.
“They don’t want to be ‘broken,’” he said. “There seems to be a consistent drumbeat that says ‘combat time, too much combat, time away from home, alcoholism, PTSD, or suicide’” as a narrative for military careers.
But Colon-Lopez sees prospects getting brighter.
“We’re improving,” he said. “A lot of us have been pretty open on the things we got wrong, and that helps.”
The military has seen some small signs of progress in its suicide prevention efforts. The latest annual report noted a decline in suicide rates for the Active-Duty, Guard, and Reserve components, and preliminary data on 2022 showed the total numbers declining for the Guard and Reserve while staying basically steady for the Active-Duty.
Colon-Lopez hopes that greater service-wide engagement on the issue will continue to help “de-stigmatize certain things and create a better quality of life” for service members and their families, who are then better positioned to serve as ambassadors of the commitment of the U.S. military.
“I’ve always stated that we are our best recruiters,” said Colon-Lopez. “To be able to be exposed to someone that came from that same place that you came from, and open your eyes, that even though you may be living in this environment today, that doesn’t have to be the case for the rest of your life. Because you can have a way out.”
Colon-Lopez cited himself as a prime example of that.
“I have clearly experienced meritocracy for what it is,” he said. “You put in the work, you best your opponents, and you rise up to the occasion.”
Through that meritocracy, helped along by “evergreen” pillars, Colon-Lopez believes the U.S. military is still well-equipped to overcome the challenges facing the services today.
“The fix is for us to really tell the story of what service means to a lot of different people,” he said. “And I think it doesn’t necessarily need to come from the service members, but from people who have benefitted from our actions in different places.”