Serving: Abroad And At Home

Kelley Griswold during his election campaign.

Serving ...

Auburn, Opelika and Smiths Station all three have city council members who are also veterans. Here are some of their stories.

Kelley Griswold:

“Being in the army is kind of my family business so to speak,” said Ward 2 Auburn Council Member Kelley Griswold.

A retired veteran himself, Griswold’s grandfather served, his father served, his brother served, his brother-in-law currently serves, a sister works on base at Fort Benning and his nephew serves.

Griswold was born at Fort Bragg and said growing up he experienced things other children wouldn’t have — like dropping off of jump towers on base at five years old.

“There was never any doubt that that would be one of the things I pursued,” he said.

Griswold pursued ROTC in both high school and at Auburn University.

The same day that Griswold graduated from Auburn, he was also commissioned in 1977.

“I was an artilleryman, so we had troop tours with soldiers in Hawaii with the 25th division and Fort Stewart, Georgia with the 24th division,” he said.

After seven years, Griswold was assigned a second specialty — research and development.

“Did that for a while at Redstone [Arsenal] and got sent down to Maxwell Airforce base to work with the school for a year, went to an airfare school,” he said. “And so my next assignment should have been rotating back and forth between secondary and troops. So I was supposed to go to Germany and then Congress got involved and mandated that the research and development people be solvated into something called the Army Acquisition Court.”

So, Griswold did not head out for Germany and did not have the opportunity for more troop time throughout his 26year career.

Instead, Griswold and his wife spent the majority of his career at Redstone.

“I went back to Redstone,” he said. “It was funny because we were stationed at Redstone five times and we kept thinking every time we’d left, we’d sell the house, sell the boat, whatever and then next thing we know, two or three years later we’ve got orders back to Redstone … it was good because I stayed in the same rocket and missile business and progressed in that.

“It was kind of cool returning to Huntsville every time because our civilian friends were still there.”

Todd Rauch through the years of military service and public office.

Abroad and at Home

Story By Hannah Lester Photos Contributed

One of Griswold’s last management roles was as project manager for the Army Tactical Mission System.

The missiles Griswold was working on here were debuted during Desert Storm, he said.

Following this, he became the deputy director of the research lab at Redstone.

Griswold left the military in 2003 but he and his wife didn’t leave Huntsville just yet. He worked for defense firms and engineering firms in the city.

He actually ended up back in the lab, too, at one point, working for the Department of Defense, civilian.

Eight years ago, Griswold and his wife decided to return to their roots, to the place they met and married — Auburn.

After moving here, Griswold took opportunities to begin to get more involved in his city.

“I wanted to know more about what was going on, so I went ahead and signed up for the public safety academy, which was very informative,” he said. “I highly recommend that to any new person that just kind of wants to get a feel for the city because you get immersed in the organization. You find out how things are organized and I thought that was really cool.”

Then Griswold joined the planning academy.

“I was attending city councils and things and this was about the time the building height thing came up,” he said. “And I live in the historic district. It used to be, you pass my house and you see Samford Hall in the distance.”

Keep Auburn Lovely began trying to fight the new height regulations and Griswold began attending some of the meetings.

“[I] realized not everyone in town wanted unlimited growth,” he said.

There was a public meeting organized at the Auburn University Hotel and Dixon Conference Center to discuss the issue, Griswold said, and the auditorium was packed. There were guest speakers from out of town too.

“And the city manager, at the time basically got up and said, ‘it doesn’t matter why y’all are here, the decision’s already been made,’” he said. “And it had been made. But it became apparent that the council was not paying attention to what the citizens wanted. And that’s kind of when I first started thinking about it.

Griswold Griswold

“And some folks asked me if I’d be interested and I had to hee and haw for a while but after a couple more actions by the council that, not only allowed the things but then reaffirmed an even higher height than what was agreed upon, that kind of made the decision for me. I was just wanting to make sure that folks who had something to say, that they would be listened to.”

Griswold decided to run, was elected and is currently serving in his first term.

“I took no contributions from anybody because I couldn’t in one hand say, ‘I want to listen to everybody’ and at the same time say, ‘well these folks gave me money,’’’ he said. “So I did it on my own.”

Griswold’s military experience affects his city council experience.

“In the military, it’s not so much consensus and groupthink,” he said. “You have a hierarchy and you have somebody in charge and everybody brings their recommendations and you decide and you move out … That has been a rude awakening to me. People think that city council members have a lot of power and it’s not true.”

Griswold said that he hasn’t been able to accomplish everything he hoped for when he ran for office.

Some ideas were not feasible once he took on the role, such as introducing term limits. It turns out, this is against Alabama law, Griswold said.

But there are still things he wants to accomplish. Griswold’s slogan for his campaign the first time around was “Restore Trust” and he said he plans to continue with his plan to “Restore Trust” by running again in the next election.

Todd Rauch:

Opelika Ward 5 Council Member Todd Rauch also had family influences that affected his decision to join the military.

“I went into the army in August 2001 as a military police officer,” Rauch said. “I went in because my uncle served in the army. He went into basic training on my third birthday in 1986 so I just remember my parents dropping him off at the bus station and him being gone and serving in the military. He was military police so that made me want to follow in his footsteps.”

Rauch was only in basic training one month before 9/11 shook the nation.

“I didn’t see a picture of what happened until Dec. 14, 2001,” he said. “So that just kind of changed whatever plans I had; the military just kind of changed as a whole. From peace-time military to a combat, wartime military and function. So my first station was in Giessen, Germany.”

Giessen, Germany was also Rauch’s uncle’s first station. There Rauch traveled to different countries and served as personal security for dignitaries, as a police officer working

Rauch with President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush

narcotics and field training.

Rauch’s unit was called to Kuwait in early 2003 and entered Iraq the day the war started on March 19, 2003.

Rauch was only 17 when he joined the military and he said that a lot of his experiences didn’t mean much to him until later in life.

“[After being in Iraq a month] we went to this compound that had a whole bunch of atropine injectors and gas masks scattered everywhere,” he said. “Atropine injectors had all been used, all the needles were out … there were some missiles there, some smaller rockets, not big missiles, and we were just really taken aback.”

It was only later, when Rauch was working in intelligence, that he discovered what they had stumbled upon.

“I found out that place that we were at was the epicenter of the Iraq war,” he said. “That is the place that led us to going into Iraq, that was the information that an informant had given the DoD and all this stuff and that they were making chemical weapons at this facility.”

This wasn’t the only time that Rauch saw things that he didn’t know the importance of at the time, but came to understand later.

“My team found the very first mass grave site in Iraq in April of 2003,” he said.

Another time, Rauch and his team had arrived at a site after a call about an RPG came in. However, when they arrived, they found a lot of people but nothing overly concerning.

Rauch, his team and the U.S. Military were searching for Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s sons.

And this site that they had arrived at turned out to be the courthouse, a meeting place for Uday, Qusay and others to make decisions, jail enemies and torture people.

When Rauch was older, and working for Auburn University as a recruiter, he visited a museum in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

“That museum that has a lot of artifacts from the wars and campaigns and military throughout history and a lot of the stuff that was in the newer campaigns, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ and ‘Operation New Dawn’, they had in a big portion of this museum,” he said. “And I realized that a lot of the artifacts that are in there were all things that we’ve done, all things that I’ve seen and it’s weird. When you’re so young, you set history, you’re living the history, but for us going in on March 19, wasn’t a big deal. But that was the very first day the war started.”

Rauch left the military in 2006 after he was wounded.

“I was part of the first wave of wounded soldiers who were coming back,” he said. “… So they didn’t know how to treat us or what to do.”

He was shot, lost his rotator cuff and was stabbed with a knife.

Rauch had hoped, following his injury, that he could attend West Point, receive a commission and return to the MP [military police] Core.

But unfortunately, West Point didn’t accept him based on his injuries.

So Rauch returned home and attended community college. It was here that his interest in politics grew, and where he met his future wife, Ali.

“I’ve always been interested in politics because of the strategy and history of it,” Rauch said. “Like what it takes to get elected, the boxes that you have the check.”

Following community college, Rauch ended up attending Auburn University. He was elected to Opelika City Council in 2020.

“After I got my degree, we lived in Huntsville for several years, but we kept our house here, so when we moved back … I wanted to do something else and I wanted to help veterans. So I started going to city council, county commission meetings. And I realized that no one was there.

I never saw our state representatives, I never saw our state senators. No one ever went to these meetings.”

Rauch said that both he, and his wife, wanted to become involved in the community.

“The problem is, how can you, someone who is not from here or not even born in the state, tell [citizens] that ‘I want to represent you and make good decisions,’” he said. “The thing is, people are going to trust military integrity, loyalty. They understand those characteristics that military service members have until you give them a reason not to. So, that’s the biggest thing, I treat my constituents like I treat my soldiers.”

Rauch said one of the major reasons he wanted to run for Opelika City Council was because the Economic Development team was working to bring veterans to Opelika to live.

“So, if I was a veteran coming from Fort Benning and just military-minded, I would come here in my community and I would look around and say, ‘okay, you say you want vets to choose Opelika, but do you represent that in your government,’’’ he said.

Rauch said that his time serving and the values he learned in the Army, such as loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage all affect the way he serves on the council. And he, like Griswold, said he plans to run again in the next election.

“I’m always choosing the harder right rather than the easier wrong.”

Morris Jackson:

Smiths Station Place 2 Council Member Morris Jackson did not choose military service. Military service chose him.

Jackson was drafted into the Army in January 1968.

Joining the military was never something Jackson saw for his future, he said. After high school, he attended technical school for a few months and then went to work for Georgia Power Company.

“But the draft was there in effect at that time and of course, I got drafted,” he said. Jackson had never left home before, Alabama or Georgia.

“I had basically been a home-type person.”

After basic training, Jackson headed to Fort Pope, Louisiana, for advanced infantry training.

“The war at that time was going on in Vietnam, the conflict if you want to call it that,” he said.

So, Jackson was sent to Vietnam.

“There I served with the 101st Airborne Division for a year in Vietnam as an infantry soldier,” he said.

Jackson only served two years in the military. And although he said he loved his time in the service, there was something, in particular, calling him back home.

“I would have probably stayed in the military if I hadn’t, I got married,” he said. “I was engaged before I went in and after I came back a bit, then I married my childhood sweetheart.”

Jackson, unlike many others, returned from his time in the service to a world that was not welcoming or appreciative.

“I went back to the 60s, where segregation and integration were in the mix of things,” he said. “So, I went back to being a 21-year-old black male in the United States in the south. And that wasn’t easy for me to accept in a sense, because it meant going back to the mop, the broom, the grass cutting.”

But, America did change. At least, in baby steps.

It was some time before Jackson looked into politics.

“I never had an earthly idea, if you asked me twenty-five years ago, was I interested in politics, [I would have said] ‘yeah, I vote.’ I could tell you who was the governor and all this kind of stuff. But as far as me keeping up with it, I see it on TV and I change the channel.”

Jackson had been living in Smiths Station since he returned from service. And, up until 2001, Smiths Station was unincorporated.

“What brought me to [politics] was … I stuck my nose into stuff and I asked a lot of questions,” he said.

Jackson said he was on the first committee that was working to incorporate Smiths Station.

When Smiths Station was finally incorporated, and it came time to elect a mayor and city council members, Jackson said he had no idea he would be asked to run for office.

“We have made a lot of progress,” he said.

Jackson has been on the council since 2001 and said he isn’t sure when he’ll retire from politics.

“We look back over the years and see the accomplishments of the city,” he said.