MacDill Commander Col. Lenny J. Richoux Talks Base, Brandon, Japan and Dinner for Military Families

Ask Col. Lenny J. Richoux to discuss his duties at the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, and he talks about roads, lights, water, sewer and electricity.

He talks about his duties as commander of the base and the 6th Air Mobility Wing, and sums up his work as a dual occupation: “I’m a mayor and president of an airline.”

But ask him to talk about his overriding responsibility, and what blows his mind, and he talks about the one thing that matters most to the deployed military member — family — and the increasingly stressful times in which that matter has to be addressed.

“It’s a stressful time to be in the military,” Richoux said in a talk before the Kiwanis Club of Greater Brandon on March 17. “We’ve been at war coming up 10 years now. Half my career we’ve been at war and that blows my mind. And that’s wearing us down. And as the economy goes down people’s marriages go down and as the economy recovers, people get divorced. The stresses of deployment are starting to present themselves. Mental health issues, caring for children, all those problems are not going unnoticed.”

Indeed, Richoux is making it a point to deal with these issues on base and off, talking before community groups and organizations in the Greater Brandon area, where, Richoux said, some 80 percent of assigned MacDill personnel live.

“You can help the airmen of MacDill,” Richoux told the Kiwanians. “Reach out, through your churches and your little league programs. Be sensitive to the spouses of military members and invite them into your community [and its many offerings and events].”

One such effort is scheduled for 6 p.m. March 24, at the First Baptist Church of Brandon, 216 North Parsons Ave. There, spouses and significant others of deployed service members, and their children, will be treated to a night out and dinner. Kids will be watched, door prizes will be won and commanders from MacDill will be on hand to meet and greet and answer questions.

The dinner is for “a parent, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, anybody who supports  a military member,” Richoux said.

And that furthers Richoux’s stated mission.

“Whether we are at war or not, whether the economy is good or bad, my leadership philosophy is that I take care of wives and kids and families so that the military member can do his or her job,” Richoux said in an interview.

His life, in good part, he said, is about youth activities on base, ballet classes, martial arts classes, childcare for working moms and single moms and all kinds of activities. As he put it: “If I can have all that in place then the military members can do their jobs. 

Richoux shared the following facts about MacDill:

• The base contributes $4.2 billion to the local economy annually, with some 20,000 people working on the base every day.

• Parking and traffic issues are huge for Richoux, with some 11,000 motorists commuting to the base daily. “I have 50 people checking identification cards every morning,” he said. “Nobody just drives onto the base.”

• The 5,700-acre base is home to 39 different organizations, the two largest being the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and United States Central Command (CENTCOM).

As for Richoux himself, his lifelong dream was to be in the air.

“I wanted to fly jets, that’s what I wanted to do when I was a little kid,” he said. “My grandfather was a Marine, serving the country. Now, 20 years into this thing, I’m leading airmen and serving my country and I get to fly jets on the side, and that’s fun.”

Richoux said he moved 14 times in his career, his most recent overseas assignment in Okinawa, Japan.

“The Japanese people are fantastically welcoming and humbling,” Richoux said, answering a question about his concerns with the devastation brought on that country after an earthquake and tsunami and now a possible nuclear meltdown.

“It’s just so scary [to see],” Richoux said. “It’s heart-wrenching to see. When I turn the TV on I can’t watch more than a few minutes. But they’re a resilient society and they’re going to come out of this fine. Fortunately, we have a strong relationship with Japan. We’re going to help them.”

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