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our countr y CW5

Rodney Sangsland RETIRES

A daughter’s reflections

After 54 years of ser ving our countr y as both active duty

Ar my and a Depar tment of Ar my Civilian my dad will have his last flight How do you sum up an entire lifetime of ser vice, a career longer than my own time on ear thover half a centur y dedicated to making this countr y, this wor ld, a better place? A career dedicated to making the Ar my better and our pilots safer I remember the first time I began to realize my dad was a big deal- I was n college and was back home in Ger many for Chr stmas break We were skiing in Gar misch, and I was te ling my dad about the movie ConAir and how cool t was that Nicolas Cage’s character was an ar my Ranger My dad s cowor ker who was skiing with us was like, Uhh you do realize that your dad is a Ranger too, r ight? And that he was the top graduate, Merr ill s Marauders?” I had no clue He had always just been dad As I got older, I would lear n more, bits and pieces as fr iends who were going through F ight School would be studying their Blackhawk manuals and say, You do real ze your dad wrote this manual, r ight?” Or when Perr y and I first star ted dating and his pilot fr iends would say, “Sande? You mean the godfather of ar my aviation?” More bits and pieces And it wasn t real y until I was an adult and read the wr ite up for my dad s Order of St Michael award that I began to fully understand the magnitude of his career A young teenager, enlisting to ser ve his countr y dur ing Vietnam, quickly picked up by Special Forces for his unusually high test scores top graduate in Ranger School, multiple language schools because of his natural aptitude for fore gn languages, Thai, Greek, Spanish Specia Forces, Golden Knights, free fall jumpmaster, flight school Developing Flight School XXI, safety protocols and emergency Blackhawk maneuvers overseeing standards, creating the Colombian militar y’s flight school program Grenada Panama Sarajevo A life dedicated to something bigger than himself, bigger than all of us A ife dedicated to exce lence in ever ything, whether b g or mundane A ife of sacr ifice bor n of love for this countr y and what she stands for, what she can be A life of ser vice, faith, lear ning, and leading It’s so hard for me to p cture my dad being retired for as long as I can remember he has always wor n a flight suit and today he will hang up his flight suit forever I hope his retirement days are filled with rest and the kind of contentment that comes from from knowing that he has g ven 110% to a job he absolutely loved, a job we l done And of course, also filled w th lots of visits to see us in Nor th Caro ina