Ft. Bragg Stories Podcast

Jean Wilson was a college freshman on October 22, 1962, when she heard President John F. Kennedy’s speech announcing the presence of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on the island of Cuba. “It sounded like an emergency, like a national emergency,” Wilson said.

Hundreds of soldiers aided in Hurricane Florence rescue and recovery efforts, even as some saw their own homes flooded or evacuated. Specialist Ruben Alvarez is a parachute rigger at Fort Bragg. During the storm, he volunteered to help evacuate houses, working long shifts with the 189th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion.

Specialist Jonathon Wannemacher is an infantryman in the 82nd Airborne. He’s also a skilled marksman. At age 26, he’s ranked as one of the top 100 competitive shooters in the country. He placed 81 out of roughly 1,200 shooters in the President’s Hundred Match, a national competition held this past July in Camp Perry, OH.

The Base Realignment and Closure process of 2005 shut down 24 military installations across the country and consolidated many more. Fort Bragg grew as a result, adding the U.S. Army Forces Command and U.S. Army Reserve Command.

Bob Dean was a twenty-year-old rising senior at Cornell in 1950. When the Korean War started that summer, he was training with his ROTC class at Fort Bragg. “I recall for the early part of the training, we had a heck of a good time,” said Dean, now 88. “We did not take it seriously.” Dean was learning the basics of artillery leadership, including aerial observation. He was delighted to be the first in his class selected to go up in a small plane over the ranges to practice adjusting artillery

Growing up on Fort Bragg as the son of an active duty service member, Josh Groll saw the military installation as his home, a small town insulated from the rest of the world.

In the fall of 2001, Shelli Altopp-Miller was living with her husband and two small children at Pope Air Force Base. He was on active duty with the Air Force, she was a stay-at-home mother.

Steve Newsom and his wife Lynn spent five years as co-directors of Quaker House, the Fayetteville nonprofit that advocates for peace and supports service members who question their role in the military. As a young man growing up New Jersey, Steve thought he might spend his entire adult career in the military, joining the Navy in 1972.

Mary Ellen Shugart served two tours as an Army nurse in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 70s. She treated hundreds of soldiers, but the memory of one young man at Fort Bragg stayed with her through the years. She recalled treating a soldier in the ICU and Recovery Ward at Womack Army Hospital in 1966. Injured in Vietnam, he’d been flown back to the U.S. for treatment for an abdominal wound.

Bill Reid is 92 now, but back in 1944 he was just 18 when he was drafted to fight in World War II . He traveled by train from New Jerse y to Fort Bragg for 17 weeks of training before heading off to Europe . On his first day at Bragg, Reid recalled he was not impressed with his initial assignment. "W hen I asked what kind of outfit it was that we were being trained for, they said, 'O h, C ooks and B akers school,' " he said . " Well, that doesn’t sit very well with a gung- ho hero." He s witched