Written by Cadet Ashley Hall
Lieutenant
Colonel Fitz Gerald has been working at Wentworth Military Academy and College
for almost 6 years. He was the Professor
of Military Science in the SROTC Department for approximately 3 years. After
retiring from the United States Army, LTC Fitz Gerald worked as the Dean of
Students. In June 2013, LTC Fitz Gerald accepted the position of Commandant of
Cadets for Wentworth.
The Sounding of the
Cannon Ceremony was the first time staff and faculty saw the 135th Corps of
Cadets as a group. They marched into the chapel under the watchful eye of LTC
Fitz Gerald. “I’m very pleased with the way the Corps has started off. I think
the Corps leadership is off to a good start. They are definitely on the right
foot. I felt when I watched the Corps march in during the Sounding of the
Cannon Ceremony, it looked better than the Corps did at the same time last
year”, said LTC Fitz Gerald. “If you recall when you were going through your
rehearsal for the ceremony I was being truthful when I said you all sounded
better and sounded louder than the Corps before and that’s all I really want is
each successive Corps of Cadets to be better than the one that came before it.
I think that the 135th Corps is on that track, but they still need to pay
attention.”
The new school
year brought many exciting, new changes around campus. In addition to the new fitness center, sand
volleyball court, and landscaping, there were changes to the cadet rules and
regulations. “I am excited to see how
the Corps reacts to some of the changes I made in the rules and
regulations. There are certain things
that I relaxed or turned into benefits for them”, he stated. “One in particular is college students now
have unlimited furloughs as long as they are in good standing. I think many of
them were quite happy because they want to make sure they don’t make a mistake
and get it taken away from them.”
Being the
Commandant of Cadets has many responsibilities.
The Commandant is responsible for every single person in the Corps of
Cadets, as well as his staff. Some parts
of the job are harder than others. “The
hardest part I’d say is first, trying to get through to the cadets that for whatever
reason, don’t want to follow the rules, regulations, and standards of a
military school. They don’t want to, they don’t like to, they don’t understand
why they have to, and they just want to fight it at every turn”, said LTC Fitz
Gerald. “Another thing I would say that
is difficult, is dealing with a cadet who has a lot of potential, has the
desire to try and succeed and do well, but keeps doing things that get them in
trouble and eventually have to be suspended from the school because they’ve done
something that they can’t recover from. You can work with them and you can see
that things are going well, and then they make a very bad decision and there’s
nothing else you can do for them. That’s hard to deal with.”
Everyone has
something that they have had to overcome in their life time, the Commandant
being one of those people. LTC Fitz Gerald spoke of one of those times. “I
was deployed to Afghanistan at the time;
I was the Operations Officer. I
was the third highest ranking officer in the unit behind the Battalion Commander
and the Battalion Executive Officer. We had several spontaneous missions going
on in the region that we were working. The Battalion Commander was on one of
those missions, and on a separate mission we have one of our Company
Commanders. His unit was ambushed and the Company Commander was killed. There
were also a couple other soldiers that were killed and we had to mount an
operation to recover their bodies which was hard to deal with because I’d known
the two soldiers that were killed, and I had to take someone who was working
for me at the time, who was really good friends with that Company Commander,
and tell him that in about an hour, he was going to get on a helicopter and he
was going to fly up to that area and he was going to have to take over for his
friend who had just died. All this was going on while my Commander was on
another mission and couldn’t get back, so we had to do all this. We were trying
to coordinate all this by radio.”
The Commandant's
vision for the 135th Corps of Cadets is as follows: “The 135th Corps of Cadets is led
by Cadets, with the Commandant's Staff in direct support, works daily to uphold
high standards in conduct, appearance, and character while striving with
integrity to achieve excellence in academics, self-discipline, leadership, and
athletics.” LTC Fitzgerald did not lay out a specific set of goals for the
Corps, but instead created this vision.
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