Although the 77th started out as the domain of white, male cadets, it was not as a result of any racial policy. It was just a reflection of the pool of cadets we had available to recruit from. After 1980, when a squadron was started in the City of Pontiac, the Drummond Island Ranger School began to have minority and female students and staff members. While there were some problems with integrating female cadets into the program, I am happy to say that racial issues were never the cause of major concern.

There was one minor racial incident in 1982 that does stand out in my mind. It was completely insignificant to the school (it only involved me and one other person), but it had a dramatic effect on my leadership style from that point onward. On that day, I started to learn something fundamental about leadership that had little to do with race relations and everything to do with how to treat the people under my command.

I was walking across the compound when I ran into the Charlie commander. She was an African-American cadet warrant officer and was one of the first female graduates of the school. She was hard core as all get out, and everyone respected her. I knew her well since she was my cadet deputy commander back home. She was really nice, and we got along great.

We talked about the stuff going on that day, and then she asked me a question that almost knocked me on my butt.

"How do you keep your hair so greasy?"

I looked at her with a confused look on my face and said, "I just don't wash it." I wasn't sure if she was making fun of me or not. It wasn't like her to be mean about how someone else looked. I had been in the field for a week, and my hair was really dirty. Our conversation had been very friendly up to that point, so I couldn't figure out why she was pointing out something that was so embarrassing for me. Her expression was clearly not one of malice. I was stumped.

As the conversation developed, I realized she was looking for advice. She mentioned the "grease" she put in her hair, and I think she was worried that she wouldn't be able to find more on the Island (a really good bet). Up until that moment, I had had no idea that many African Americans have very dry scalps and need to apply "grease" to their hair to keep it from becoming too dry.

This was a real "light bulb over the head" moment for me. I suddenly realized that I didn't really know this young woman at all. It had never occurred to me that she would have to do anything different to her hair than I did. What else had I missed?

I had been working with her for over a year, and I had no idea how she spent her time. I didn't have a clue what life was like for her living in the city. Had there been questions I had asked her like the one she had just asked me? Had she been unintentionally insulted or confused from something I might have brought up?

At least our ignorance was mutual. She hadn't known that some white people have a problem with greasy hair if they don't wash it regularly. I was a white, middle class guy from a farming community. We had square dances on main street and tractor races when our parents weren't home. I'd bet my friend from the city had never even heard of pig wrestling. She was just as clueless about my reality as I was about hers.

We lived twenty minutes and a world apart.

I had been working with cadets in the city for a while, and I thought I knew what the heck I was doing. Now it suddenly became clear to me that I didn't know as much as I thought I did. I had prided myself on being progressive. While my friends at school made watermelon and wetback jokes, I had been going into the city to work with people of different races. I thought I was so above it all. Now I was learning that I wasn't much more enlightened than my schoolmates. Sure, I didn't tell those racist jokes, but I had just played at becoming a part of the inner-city community. I hadn't attempted to actually learn that much about my peers at the squadron.

As I talked to her and other cadets in the weeks that followed, I realized that some of the things I had done in the past had really angered my cadets. I treated them just like I had treated every other cadet I had ever trained, but I hadn't taken into consideration that they might view me in a different light than their black and Hispanic leaders. In fact, I had never considered race at all. I just figured we were all part of the green machine, and that was that.

Of course, that was because I was a white, Christian guy in America. I didn't have to consider race, religion or gender. I could go anywhere in America and get the hair products I needed. I didn't have people crossing the street when they saw me coming down the sidewalk. To me, the police were fat guys who caught speeders, not people who stopped me on the street and frisked me just because I was walking in a strange neighborhood. As a Catholic, I could sit through the required non-denominational Christian services and not feel uncomfortable. As a guy, no one had questioned my right to be on the Island.

It wasn't until that cadet officer asked me an innocent question about my hair that I started to realize that she lived in a totally different reality than I did. The full realization didn't happen overnight. It took me a while to get my head around this very big fact, but once I did, I was a much more effective leader.

Before this, I had been "tough but fair"... at least in my mind. I had been taught that it was better to separate yourself from your troops. Leaders who fraternized became too close to their people and were less effective leaders. Leadership was easy; the leader gave orders, and the subordinates followed them. There was no need for emotion, explanation or justification. All you needed was the stripes on your collar. As long as you didn't single anyone out, then you were being fair.

What I didn't understand was that I was not perceived that way. What my cadets saw was this "rich" white kid coming in to their unit and acting like "Massa' Hannibal". I had come into the squadron as a transfer, and I had jumped up to first sergeant ahead of people who had been there a while. Since the cadet commander was white, the cadets thought it was at least partly because of the color of my skin. They didn't know that I had been in CAP for longer than anyone in the unit (including most of the seniors). They didn't know because I never told them. I just went in and started giving orders.

After my little epiphany on the Island in '82, I learned that it wasn't just my white friends in school who made assumptions based on race. As I opened my eyes to it, I saw that my cadets were making assumptions about me. As I showed an honest desire to learn about their lives and treated them like people instead of machines, the race thing stopped interfering with my attempts at leading. My black and Hispanic cadets began to share things that they never would have before.

For instance, they all called our cadet commander Lieutenant "Match Stick", even when they were reporting to him. They would say it fast and pretend that they were just trying to say his name, but it was clear to me what they were saying.

It was a play on his eastern European name, but I never understood why they thought it was so clever. Once I had stopped acting in a manner that they found aloof (and became someone they trusted), they explained to me that he was such an arrogant jerk that they all "wanted to rub his head on something rough until it caught fire". Ouch! That WAS clever.

Before I changed my behavior towards my troops, they hadn't shared that joke with me. Even though they knew I didn't care for the guy either, they figured I would rat them out since it was about another white guy. They had made assumptions about me based on the color of my skin.

The cool thing was that when I started treating them like individuals and made a real effort to see where they were coming from, they did the same for me. The color thing didn't get in the way anymore. They even got to the point where they entrusted me with the true meaning of "Match Stick". At that point, I finally started being an effective first shirt.

What was even more important to my development as a leader was the realization that my new methods didn't just help with race relations. I have found that the white kids respond just as well to my leadership style of keeping people informed, learning about them personally, and letting them get to know me.

I haven't lowered my standards, but I make sure that I explain myself to my people a lot more. The "because I told you to" and the "I don't need to explain my orders" Hannibal is gone now. I learned that everyone (no matter what race, age or gender) works better and harder when they understand the mission and its importance...and when they know and trust their leaders.