Retired United States Army veteran John Matthews Jr. has plenty of interesting things to tell about the places he’s been and the people he has met during his 30-year career in the service.
Matthews began his Army career with medical training at Fort Sam Houston, and he said once they found out he could type, he was placed in the administrative section of his company, because the Army was short of clerks.
Joining the military was not a part of Matthews’ original plan. He was enrolled in Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College and had aspirations of becoming a teacher after he graduated in 1970.
"I got a draft notice right after I finished college. Of course I had gotten a draft notice every year. I had to come home every year from college and bring a letter from the dean saying that I was still a student and in good standing," Matthews said.
However, upon graduating from Alcorn, Matthews was informed by the local draft board that he was now required to go into the military.
"I thought that I was gonna be good to go, to go on to either grad school or teach, because I had signed a teaching contract up in Shaw," Matthews said.
Nevertheless, he said the conversation with the draft board did not turn out as he had expected.
"They said ‘no sir, you're going into the military,’" he said.
Matthews said he took some time to contemplate whether it would be better to accept the notice and be drafted into the army to do what they wanted him to do or to volunteer and do what he wanted to do.
So he went back to the draft board and asked if enlisting through a recruiter would override his draft notice, and they told him that it would.
Matthews said that he went to see a recruiter, chose what he would like to do in the Army because he would rather spend three years doing what he wanted to do versus serving two years doing what the Army wanted him to do.
"And I'm happy I did that because I went ahead and signed up for medical care and treatment with medical lab technicians since I had a degree in biology,” Matthews said.
He recalled that one of the guys that was with him in basic training had completed law school, but that guy was sent to the infantry because he had not voluntarily signed up.
After completing his medical training at Fort Sam Houston, Matthews was assigned to Okinawa, Japan from 1972 to 1974 as a personnel specialist.
From Okinawa his enlistment brought him to Fort Benjamin Harrison from 1974-1980, where he became an instructor.
"I actually didn't want to be an instructor in the Army. They sent me to Korea, and that was strange because I asked to volunteer to go to Korea and they disapproved it.," he said.
That was from 1980-1981. Matthews said that as soon as he made wedding plans to get married that's when the orders to Korea came through, about three months later.
From Korea, his duty brought him to Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas in 1981, where he remained until 1985 as a personnel sergeant. From there he was assigned to the Pentagon in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff of Operations as a personnel advisor from 1985-1987.
That position led to a six-month training at the Sergeants Major Academy; and from there back to Korea for another year as the G-1 Adjutant General Sergeant Major. “The very first one in Korea because what they were doing is, they were combining the two jobs," Matthews said.
From 1989-1993 Mathews was reassigned to the Pentagon to the National Guard Bureau to be the sergeant major of the Army National Guard Personnel Center. That position led to a reassignment to Berlin, Germany for a year to facilitate the shutdown.
Matthews said the U.S. was pulling troops out of there and told him they needed someone who was well experienced in personnel to handle all of the problems associated with drawing down.
From Berlin he was sent to Heidelberg, Germany from 1994-1996 where he was the G-1 Sergeant Major and from there he was stationed at Fort Eustis, Virginia from 1996 to his retirement in 2000 as the Adjutant General Sergeant Major for Fort Eustis with 30 years of service.
One thing that the military definitely believes in is instruction. Matthews said, "The Army believes in training; you've got to get training in order to get promoted." One of the many training courses that he experienced and one that really stood above the rest was a management-training course he had in Rock Island, Illinois.
He said the course was originally for officers and that when he initially applied as an enlisted person he was denied admission, but he sought and got special permission and ended up being the only enlisted person in the course. "In fact, I was able to solve a problem that the instructor said hadn't been solved in three years." He said it was a “beautiful” program.
Another of his accomplishments included receiving top-secret clearance to work at Goodfellow Air Force Base and he said it was that high-level clearance that got him assigned to the Pentagon.
"I didn't think that I qualified for this assignment, because it required a top secret clearance, and I didn't know if my background would keep me from getting a top secret clearance, because I really didn't understand what it was all about,” he said.
Of the people Matthews said that he has met over his three decades in the military, none has impressed him more than the late General Colin Powell.
“He was a very interesting guy; he was a real down-to-earth General. He would talk to anybody. The man, to me, was brilliant because I had to sit through a briefing with him. This guy could look at a slide and say, ‘wait a minute, this line doesn't agree with slide number such and such.’ He was just that smart to me, but he said he was just an average student, but I thought the man was brilliant myself."
Additionally, Matthews said that although he didn't get a chance to personally meet President Bill Clinton, he was in the facility when Clinton visited Berlin Matthews asserted, "I preferred to actually meet the lower-ranking guys, because to me they were the ones who actually made the Army go."
He said the closest he came to any combat situation was being near the Demilitarized Zone in Korea. Matthew said he's visited the area several times and did have some interesting stories. “The DMZ is just a little sorta like a sidewalk more or less about a foot tall,” he said.
He described one incident that although it was a military action, it did involve soldiers. “One North Korean soldier spat on this South Korean soldier and he hit him with a butt stroke to the head and knocked him out cold. And I said, ‘Lord you've got to get me out of here because these guys are going to start a war,’” he said. “Parts of the DMZ, you can just step across it and you're in North Korea."
Matthews also remarked that he had an opportunity to go to Berlin while the wall was still up. He said cities in Germany—Heidelberg and Berlin—were both really beautiful.
Reflecting back on his military career and retirement, Matthew said that although he had job offers to come to other places, he chose to come back home to be available for his family. The offers that have the greatest significance to him were the jobs that involved him working at the Pentagon. “I opted not to remain up in that area, I opted to come home. I just have to say God was in the planning.”
Matthews acknowledges God’s planning because if he had taken one of those jobs, he would have been in the meeting where military personnel were killed during the 9/11 attacks. "In fact, I knew personally two of the people that were killed on 9/11 in the Pentagon. One of them had actually asked me to apply for a job there."
Matthews said he also felt a connection to one of the victims in more ways than one because both the officer and the officer’s wife had been his commanders.
"And the bad part about it is he wasn't even supposed to be there that day. He was processing, getting ready to retire," Matthews said.
Although he did not name the military official, Matthews said the man had once asked him what he wanted his next assignment to be and Matthews jokingly told him that he wanted his job.
“Just kidding though, I really didn't want any part of being assigned to the Pentagon," Matthews said.
He added that a number of people would go to extreme measures just to secure a position at that military defense building; whereas, he was assigned there twice, but didn't really want to be there.
He did apply for some human resources positions once he moved back to Indianola and according to him, he got some strange replies.
“One person told me I was overqualified for the job and another person told me, ‘I can't hire you, because with your experience you'll take my job.”
So, he decided to take the national teachers’ exam and upon passing that, he spent two and a half years as a science teacher at the then Robert L. Merritt Middle School. But after a 2001 heart attack and several mini-strokes, Matthew said he was advised by his doctor not to continue teaching because it could cause his condition to worsen and he likely would not survive if he continued.
He did run for mayor in 2009 and has continued his legacy of service with an eight-year stint as Chairman of the Sunflower County Democratic Executive Committee and chairman of the Head Start policy council for three years.
