STEELE-WAYNE

Excerpts from article published in San Diego Union-Tribune on 11/11/2012:

When COL Wayne Steele joined the Corps, Marines wore olive green sateen and scrambled down cargo nets to board “Mike boats.”  They mimeographed supply lists, lived in open squad bays racked by the dozens in bunks, and fired the M-14 rifle.  Forty-two years later, uniforms, equipment and tactics have gone through several permutations, but Steele is still serving.  Next year, the Logistics Staff Officer for the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing based at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar will finally retire from the military.  Not by choice.  At 62, he will be forced out by age limits.  “Probably as long as I could serve and be productive, I would,” Steele said.  “I just hung around as long as I thought I could do something.”

Steele enlisted in 1970, when many other Marines eligible for retirement today were toddlers or yet to be born.  After training as a boot Marine in San Diego, Steele was by his account a cocky "rag bag" of a lance corporal wearing a rank he didn't deserve.  A staff sergeant stepped in with some guidance, and Steele ended up being promoted through 17 enlisted and officer ranks.  He was stationed at nearly every base and air station in the Marine Corps and served as platoon commander and drill instructor, to name a couple of favorite jobs.  He deployed in combat to Afghanistan this year and previously to Iraq — for two different wars — as well as overseas assignments in Somalia and Korea.  During his lengthy career he met most of the Marine leadership serving today including the Commandant of the Marine Corps, GEN James Amos, his former squadron commander.  

Young Marines wander into Steele’s office sometimes and say, “Dad says hello; you served together.”  Steele doesn’t mind being the Old Man.  He loves to rib everyone, including himself.  “What surprises people is the fact that I’m still kicking.  “They say, ‘Hey, I thought you were dead!’ ” he said.  After more than four decades in the Corps, Steele clearly has stamina.  He doesn’t drink or smoke, can outrun Marines two decades younger and scored nearly perfect this year on the combat fitness test.  Steele grew up one of 15 children.  As a boy in Allamuchy, New Jersey, he was fetching water for the house when he met a Marine veteran who inspired him to serve, hooking him on Marine magazines and John Wayne movies.  A couple of years later he enlisted and married a high school classmate, his wife of 40 years, known to many young Marines as “Mama Vicki.”  Steele calls her “my rock,” the cornerstone of his life and his career.  They moved some 16 times and Vicki was forced to bounce from job to job, raising their four boys largely on her own much of the time.  Despite the hardships she loves the Corps as much as her husband and pushed him to become an officer when he was procrastinating, he said.  “He thinks people are making too big of a deal over his time in service.  I talk about it all the time and think it’s great that he is as good as he is,” Vicki Steele said.  “There is nothing he can’t do. He makes blueprints to build on our house, he does the plumbing, he fixes the cars.  I am one of his biggest fans, and the boys think the same about him. They would all take a bullet for the man,” she said.

The Chief Of Staff for 1st Marine Logistics Group at Camp Pendleton, said Steele could have retired long ago, but “he is a die-hard Marine.”  He met Steele more than a decade ago when they both served at Twentynine Palms.  Over the years Steele absorbed a huge body of knowledge about the Corps, logistics and the air wing in particular, he said.  “He is very technically competent in his job and a great mentor to his Marines.  He has been in a long time, so he knows the Marine Corps backward and forward and he is able to impart the knowledge that he has gained.”  Steele displays all his promotions and merit certificates in his office.  They take up most of one wall, recalled a GYSGT, a Camp Pendleton Marine who used to work under Steele with the air wing.  He doesn’t do it to thump his chest, he said.  “It’s for the Marines, to let them know regardless of what it is, whatever you want to do, you can.  He came in as a lowly private as he called himself, and 40 years later he is retiring as a full bird colonel, something a lot who came in as officers might not achieve.”

Fellow Marines remind Steele that he has been working for free in a sense, since he could have made about the same paycheck if he had stepped aside after 40 years.  Money wasn’t his motivation.  “What I love about the Marine Corps is the people,” Steele said.  “We have some of the finest young Americans serving in the United States.  They’re sharp, they’re forward thinkers.  To have the pleasure of leading those young men and women — you just can’t do it anywhere else.”  After he retires, Steele plans to do more bass fishing in the lakes around his Lemon Grove home and visit his children and nine grandchildren.  He bought a boat last year but fears life without the Corps might be boring.  “I still feel maybe I have some service to do,” he said.  “Maybe I’ll find something where I’m working with some organization that’s helping somebody.”

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)