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National Guard general helps country prepare for any catastrophe

by Master Sgt. Bob Haskell

AUGUSTA, Maine (Army News Service, March 2, 1998) -- In 1963, Roger Schultz was a mechanically-inclined farm boy living in northwestern Iowa who wanted to learn more about maintaining heavy equipment. He was 17 when he joined the Iowa Army National Guard and a new mechanized infantry battalion to become a mechanic for armored personnel carriers and other tracked vehicles.

America, especially the Midwest, was considered a safe place in which to live.

Thirty-five years later, Roger Charles Schultz is an Army Guard brigadier general who is helping his country prepare for the worst, because the United States is no longer considered safe.

The devastating bombings in Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center in New York during this decade have cast a cloud of concern over the entire country about weapons of mass destruction.

Schultz, 52, has labored at the Pentagon since last September preparing the National Guard and the nation to deal with the catastrophic effects of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons that, we all have learned, can place many people in harm's way without warning.

He has become the defense community's Deputy Director of Military Support that backs up civil authorities in the states and territories when they need help. His permanent successor in April will be another National Guard general, and, by October, half of the military staff members in the 34-member support organization are expected to come from the reserve components.

Weapons of mass destruction are getting a lot of attention. Congress has tasked the Defense Department with providing firefighters, emergency medical personnel and other first responders in 120 cities with expert advise about proper procedures.

"We started with a blank piece of paper. We're building the prototype," said Schultz about the process of planning a coordinated and synchronized reaction to events that defy the imagination.

"First responders have told us they need a rapid assessment of the agent or device that cause the catastrophe so they know how much danger there is to themselves and to others who will arrive later," Schultz explained. "People need to know where they can evacuate patients and what areas to avoid."

He is no stranger to the unknown. He was awarded the Silver Star for heroism following a long night in a Vietnam jungle in 1969 when he was wounded and his mechanized infantry team was cut off from its base camp.

"You do things in combat that you wonder about for a long time afterward," said Schultz who does not dwell on that night when he was a young officer.

In 1993 he commanded the task force that dealt with Iowa's crisis from the summer's floods that ravaged 8 million acres in nine states. The challenges included providing good water for 250,000 people after Des Moines lost its water treatment plant.

Schultz acquired a bachelor's degree in management and a master's in public administration after serving in Vietnam and before facing the Iowa floods that required the Guard to work closely with civil authorities.

"I've worked with emergency response people a great deal, since my early days in the Guard," said Schultz. He was activated for tornado duty during his first six months.

Now, it can be argued, he has brought his expertise to the Pentagon at the right time to help the National Guard and the nation plan for emergencies that Americans did not consider possible when Roger Schultz was farm boy in Iowa.

(Editor's note: Haskell is with the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va.)