Old Business a. Closed session pursuant to MCL 15.268(h) to consider a written attorney opinion exempt from discussion or disclosure by state or federal statute regarding marihuana businesses (2/3 Roll call)

it resulted in the most frightening moments of his life.

In recalling the events of Jan. 8, Joseph recounted his own prayer he had given two years prior — not from the safety of an air hangar in Michigan, but while huddled in a bunker with his fellow soldiers as they watched missiles rain down upon them at Al Assad.

“As soon as the first missile hit and you felt that shake, you knew this was no ordinary missile strike, that this was no ordinary IDF (indirect fire),” he said. “It shook me to the core. At that point in time, I realized, this is real.”

Of the 16 missiles fired by the Iranians — a retaliatory attack from a previous U.S. drone strike to kill Iranian General Qasem Soleimani — 11 of them landed at Al Asad.

One of those 11 missile strikes resulted in Joseph receiving his purple heart, having landed a mere 110 yards away from his bunker, the resulting explosion shaking him “to his core.”

“My building alone, it separated the roof from the wall almost a foot, that’s how massive this concussive blast was, even though we were behind big cement barriers,” he said.

After three volleys of missile strikes over several hours, what has been deemed the largest ballistic missile attack ever against Americans miraculously resulted in zero casualties.

However, more than 100 soldiers and airmen suffered traumatic brain injuries — Joseph included — as he experienced a concussion from the closest blast.

It was a night neither Joseph nor Emily will ever forget, as despite being more than 6,100 miles from her husband, she could do nothing but watch in horror as portions of the missile attack played out live on national news networks.

‘WE MAY NOT SURVIVE’

On Jan. 8, 2020, Joseph, on his third deployment with the Michigan National Guard having previously served in Iraq and Afghanistan, had little worry in his mind that anything may be amiss that day.

As a flight operations sergeant, Joseph would spend the majority of his time on various air bases from behind a desk.

As a flight tracker, It was Joseph’s job to track every flight out of the base, having spent thousands of hours since he first enlisted in 2004, tracking various aircraft, talking to the pilots, ensuring they made it to their destination safely.

“In all my time, I never experienced any loss of life, no loss of equipment, while tracking these aircraft,” he said. “So I think that kind of made me a little bit complacent, thinking that all deployments are going to be easy. We’d occasionally have some indirect fire — motors, rockets — but they were always landing at least a half-mile from the base. That’s nothing, no big deal.”

As he left for that third deployment to Al Assad in December 2019, Joseph recalled feeling it would be another easy deployment.

“It’s going to be a cakewalk,” he recalled. “I was even talking to the new guys, one guy who just got out of training, and I told him, ‘you’ll never have to wear your body armor.’”

However, there would be nothing easy about Jan. 8.

Not even three weeks into his deployment, Joseph said intelligence at the base had revealed an attack from the Iranians was likely coming.

The U.S. drone strike had killed Soleimani just five days earlier on Jan. 3 at the Baghdad airport in Iraq and Al Assad had already begun preparing for retaliation.

“At first, they thought it was going to be a ground attack, so we were getting ready for that, getting our weapons, putting body armor on, and we were told it might happen between midnight and 3 a.m.,” Joseph said.

As he was ordered to enter a bunker, Joseph then watched as 1,000 of the 2,000 soldiers stationed at the base were evacuated.

“We could watch, and we did, we watched hundreds of civilians and other military personnel being evacuated out of the base,” he said. “That didn’t seem normal.”

Not long after, Joseph was then informed that the base was no longer preparing for a ground attack, but a missile strike.

“This is not fun, now,” he said. “The first thought that went through my head was, ‘OK, are these going to be (smaller) rocket strikes?’ I don’t even think they truly knew what Iran was going to send at us.”

As it would turn out, the base had prepared for a volley of rockets to be lobbed at the base, each carrying at most a 60-pound warhead.

“They will leave maybe a small crater, two-foot deep, about seven-foot wide in circumference,” Joseph said.

However, as it would turn out, Iran had moved ballistic missiles carrying warheads weighing more than 1,000 pounds into place for a full bombardment of the base.

Per a report from CBS News, an army intelligence officer gave an assessment of the threat: “Their intention is to level this base and we may not survive.”

‘HUNKER DOWN AND PRAY’

Waiting in the bunker for hours, for anything to happen, at one point, Joseph said he and his fellow soldiers reached a point where they thought maybe an attack wasn’t coming after all.

“It was getting closer and closer to that time where it was supposed to happen, but nothing,” he said. “We were wondering if it was just a bluff.”

However, Joseph, the one soldier in the bunker with an active access card for a local military communication channel, was asked to hand his card over to his platoon leader so they could receive an update.

“As they went in there, they were watching it, and they saw right across the channel … It was an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) inbound — impact three minutes,” he said. “I wasn’t in there, but they looked at each other and said ‘run.’

Joseph recalled that as the three men sprinted for the bunker, one soldier made it to the bunker, another made it to the entrance of the bunker and one was outside when the first missile hit.

“They were big, big explosions,” he said. “They shook everything. You felt it to your core, the vibration.”

At that point, all Joseph and his fellow soldiers could do was wait it out.

“We couldn’t evacuate,” he said. “There were so many missiles coming in, we couldn’t evacuate. We had already evacuated some of our aircraft, so we were literally a skeleton crew.”

Through an opening in the bunker, Joseph watched as every few minutes a missile would strike the base.

“I’m sitting on the end of the bunker, so I could watch the missiles coming in,” he said. “The one I saw, a full hit, about half a mile away … I had never seen anything that big in real life.”

Then, the missile that landed closest — just a football field away — came crashing down.

“They hit the hangar, destroyed our aircraft, all of our extra parts and destroyed our ammo container,” he said. “It took everything out.”

As the ground shook around them and the soldiers collected themselves, Joseph said shrapnel, consisting of metal, cement and rock, battered across the outside of the bunker as he and the others remained inside, continuing to pray that the missiles would keep their distance.

“In that moment, you just say, ‘God, please, no,’” he said. “That’s when you realize, that if that hit is closer next time, you’re not going to survive. If one’s closer than 110 yards, I’m not going to survive. So you just hunker down and pray that it doesn’t hit your bunker. You pray. You beg God, ‘please don’t let this be my time.’

“We could feel a lot of the heat — the fumes, smoke, everything,” he continued. “Smoke came through into the bunker — burning chemicals, fuel from the aircraft, oil. To be honest, at that point in time, after that one, I looked up at the sky, and said, ‘God, if it’s my time, just take care of my family.’ I was prepared to go. I honestly thought I was done.”

54 MINUTES OF SILENCE

Meanwhile, half a world away, Emily had been preparing to enjoy dinner with her three children at her mother’s house in Greenville.

It was just moments before they would sit down together to eat when “Breaking News” flashed up on the television screen.

Emily watched at first with curiosity, then in horror as the report stated that El Assad was under a missile attack.

She knew that’s where her husband was stationed.

What she didn’t know was anything else.

Not wanting to scare her children, Emily acted as if nothing was wrong.

“I made the very conscious decision to reach up and turn off the TV,” she said. “I did not need the kids to be burdened with worry. So we went through dinner, but I don’t remember eating. I just remember pushing my food around the plate, talking about the day, watching everybody else eat.”

Emily admitted that what she was actually doing was counting down the minutes until she could turn the TV back on and potentially watch for the fate of her husband.

Additionally, somewhere in the house was a letter from Joseph to his family — a letter every U.S. soldier leaves behind for family.

Within that letter was a final message from him to his wife and children, in the event he may not return home.

Twice previously, that letter had been joyously burned after Joseph returned from his deployments overseas.

But now the thought sat in the back of Emily’s mind that this time, she may eventually have to open that letter.

After dinner concluded, her children went upstairs to play and she resumed the breaking news broadcast.

As she watched the events unfold, Emily then experienced the longest eight minutes of her life.

At 6:41 p.m., she texted her husband, “Babe please tell me you’re safe. I saw breaking news about your base. Need to know you’re OK.”

At 6:49 p.m., Joseph texted back with a response of just two words: “I’m ok.”

“I was so relieved,” Emily recalled. “I exhaled this full breath I didn’t know I was holding.”

She then texted her husband back, “Thank god. Nowhere near you? I love you.”

Emily waited. She then waited some more.

Facing silence from her phone, the thought of having to open that letter returned.

But after an excruciating 25 minutes, Emily was able to breathe another sigh of relief as Joseph responded.

“Love you too” Joseph texted back.

But as Emily continued to watch the news broadcast, she observed in real-time as the second round of missiles suddenly struck the base.

“I’m being calm for the kids,” she texted.

“Footage is on every channel,” she texted again.

No response.

At some point in the news broadcast, it’s reported that Iran is claiming 30 U.S. service members have been killed in the attack.

“I’m sitting there with tears running down my face,” Emily recalled.

She then tries to reach Joseph once more.

“I’m scared,” she texted.

“Babe are you ok,” she texts again.

Emily feared the worst, that this time, her husband may not have been so lucky.

“I haven’t heard anything from my husband in about an hour,” she said. “At this point, I’m planning his funeral in my head. How do I tell the kids? How do we keep going? If he’s gone, how in the world do we get through this? I never felt the distance between us more profoundly than that night. To realize you are watching this footage and you could be watching your loved one being hurt or killed in real time ... I have never felt so helpless.”

It would be 54 minutes between texts before Emily would thankfully hear from her husband.

Once again, the text contained the most relieving two words she could ask for.

“I’m ok,” he texted back.

Once the missile strikes finally came to an end, Joseph reassured his wife that he and everyone else with him were OK. The two concluded their messaging that evening with texts of “I love you,” and “love you more.”

As Joseph prayed and prayed that evening, he now takes comfort in the fact that regardless of how far away they were, his family was there for him — including his late mother, who had passed away only six months before his deployment to Al Assad.

“At one point I just sat there, and I prayed and prayed, and I knew my mom was there,” he said, fighting back tears. “At one point I felt this blanket of warmth wash over me in protection. I knew, that’s my mom. She’s here protecting me.”

A ‘FEELING LIKE NO OTHER’

It wouldn’t be for another nine months that Joseph would return to the United States, upon the conclusion of what he hopes to be his final deployment overseas.

When he arrived at the airport, the site of his wife waiting for him as he departed the plane was one he will fondly remember.

“As soon as I got off the airplane, walking down to get away from the gate, I don’t think I could breathe for about 15 to 20 seconds because of how tight her hug was and I didn’t mind,” he said. “That hug meant more than ‘I love you.’ I was safe. I was alive. I was real. It encompassed everything you could ever believe a hug could be.”

Once he arrived back in Greenville, Joseph had planned to surprise his children — who did not know he was returning — in the morning by making them breakfast.

However, as he walked in the door, his 4-year-old son, Joseph Jr., half-asleep in his grandmother’s arms, spotted his father.

“He saw me and he instantly wanted a hug, so I held him so tight,” he said.

Not wanting to be unfair to their daughters, Emily went upstairs and woke Elisabeth, 10, and Katherine, 8, so they could see who awaited them downstairs.

“I’m just sitting there in the chair and it was a dog pile for about an hour,” Joseph said with a smile. “I’m sitting there with all three kids piled up on me and that didn’t bother me in the slightest. That has to be the best feeling I’ve ever had.”

Two days after arriving back in Michigan, Joseph and Emily closed on a new home on Congress Street, and not wasting any time, the family made quick use of the backyard fire pit.

For the third time, they came together to burn Joseph’s unopened letter.

“That was definitely harder to go through,” Emily said. “But because of the extremes we went through, it was also infinitely more calming and reassuring

‘NO REGRETS’

Now back to living his civilian life, working as a line lead at Michigan Turkey Producers in Grand Rapids, Joseph said he relishes every minute he has with his family, though he remains committed to finishing out his tenure as a soldier for three more years until he’s served in the National Guard for a full 20 years and can retire.

Having originally been denied the Purple Heart, as it was first determined to be awarded only to those who had been medically evacuated from the base, Joseph was relieved when a doctor in Grand Ledge saw to it that he and his fellow soldiers would indeed receive their Purple Hearts.

To his shock, what he expected might arrive as a package in the mail instead came in the form of being delivered personally by Whitmer.

In meeting Whitmer, Joseph said the experience helped restore some of his faith in government leadership.

“Before the ceremony, me and the three other people who were able to be there for our Purple Hearts, she met with us privately,” he said. “She wanted to know more about us, to understand our perspective, to understand what we went through. She wanted the first-person perspective. Despite everything, she has been more for the military than I’ve seen of a lot of other governors. She first saw us off for our deployment ceremony and then she was able to be there for our Purple Heart. I will never forget that.”

While Joseph admits a concussion may not appear worthy in the eyes of some, regarding earning the Purple Heart medal, he said the effects of that missile blast will carry on with him for the rest of his life.

“In the moment, it affected me,” he said. “I had ringing in my ears, a splitting headache, and at the base, I worked on a computer screen all day, which was terrible for me. For weeks, I had all these emotions, all this fear because we didn’t know what the follow-up was going to be. We were all still on edge, all the way up until about three to four weeks after the event.”

Additionally, Joseph said he was not able to follow the advice of the doctor who treated him.

“I was told to give myself two weeks of brain rest, but we’re responsible for Medevac — we can’t do that,” he said. “With my job, we couldn’t do that, the three of us doing that job. If a mission comes through, we have to be able to see it through and pass it to the rest of the pilots and crews.”

Joseph said when being observed at the base by medical personnel, he was informed he will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), likely for the rest of his life, as a result of his experience.

“I still have nightmares and those will probably never go away,” he said. “I’ll probably have nightmares for the rest of my life, but you learn how to deal with it.”

Looking back on the experience, Joseph said he has no regrets about his decision to serve his country.

“I have no regrets, none,” he said. “It’s given me a lot of knowledge and experience. I wanted to serve my country. My older brother was active duty in the military for 21 years. He was infantry and I always looked up to him. By being in the National Guard, I still get to have my civilian life, but also serve my country. I always loved the thought of serving my country and giving back to the country that has given me so many freedoms. It’s the thing I felt I had to do.”

For Emily, despite experiencing what is arguably the worst night of her life, she remains as proud as ever of her husband for earning his Purple Heart, following in the steps of both of her own grandfathers, who also earned Purple Hearts.

“For being a gung-ho military wife and being as supportive as I am, I would joke around with him that this Purple Heart seems like kind of a silly thing to award because, being a concussion, it’s like, ‘you have a booboo, here’s a medal,’” she said. “I just didn’t quite understand really what this represented — and then I went to the ceremony. It hit me. My husband, the person that I love the most in the world, could have died. I could have watched his death live on television. So I cried throughout the ceremony, realizing the importance of what was being awarded.

“We could have been at a ceremony with flag-covered coffins,” she continued. “The fact that he is still here is a miracle in and of itself. To go from joking around — ‘you’ve been injured, here’s a medal’ — to finally understanding the importance of what has been done, it’s been a very humbling experience.”

Starting third from left, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer stands with National Guard Sgt. Joseph Suchowolec, 37, and his family after presenting him with his Purple Heart medal during a ceremony last month after he sustained an injury during a missile attack while stationed at Al Assad Air Force Base in Iraq on Jan. 8, 2020. — Submitted photo

Texts between National Guard Sgt. Joseph Suchowolec and his wife, Emily, on the evening of Jan. 8, 2020, showcase both the fear and love shared between the two as Joseph was under missile fire at Al Assad Air Force Base in Iraq while Emily watched the attack from home in Greenville unfold in real-time on a news

broadcast. — Submitted photo