Sammy “Guy” Stricklan
Guy’s brother Jim called me on Thursday night and asked if I could speak about Guy from a company commanders perspective for about three to five minutes. I advised him that I would be honored to do so. However, to truly go into all the amazing attributes and qualities of Guy it would take much longer than the time I have been allocated so I will attempt to highlight and summarize my ten year friendship with Guy.
From the start of knowing Guy, it became very apparent to me that this was a very high caliber individual. When I was a young boy scout, I learned what is called the scout law. It became apparent to me that Guy Stricklan lived all of these qualities and I would like to highlight them. Guy was trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent (when he needed to be, Guy was always one to voice his opinion and concerns and usually had a comment to share).
My first interaction with Guy was when we were both involved in the military support of the 2002 Winter Olympic games in Salt Lake City. Initially, Guy and I were paired to work with each other on some of the Tactical Operations Center details. It became very apparent to me very quickly that Guy Stricklan knew what he was doing in every facet of the imagination. He was so very organized, deliberate in all of his actions, confident and with his vast amount of experience he knew what was required to not only get the mission done but to make it excel. In the back of my mind, I thought, wow, I am really glad I will be able to work with Guy, I can jump on his coat tails and learn a lot. Regretfully, the command saw the talents that Guy had and placed him elsewhere and I was back to working solo. As was expected, Guy did an excellent job in the role he played in supporting the Olympic winter games.
A few months after the Olympics, I was selected to take command of Alpha Company 1-211 Attack Aviation, known as the Avengers. I was very relieved to find out that at the time, Guy Stricklan was in the company. As a commander you have to try and act as if you know everything when in reality, especially in my case, it was apparent that I had a steep learning curve in front of me. This was when Guy took me under his wing. He immediately became my right hand man. He would stay late after drill and discuss issues with me and he would come in and meet with me before drill at times in order to assist me in coming up with taskers that needed to be accomplished during the drill period. Guy Stricklan was my mentor, an example for excellence, he had integrity in all he did, showed service before self, he would put others before his own needs. There were a lot of items that had been neglected from the previous commander and as we know with Guy, he always seeks perfection, so he brought a lot of the items up to me with resolutions. Guy was not one to just bring items to your attention; he would also provide resolutions in order to fix those problems. During my time in command Guy had a roller blade accident causing a compound fracture to his forearm. It was during this time that Guy was unable to fly that I was able to bring him into the Unit on office days and he was able to really go to town on getting things cleaned up. The next drill we had, you could tell there was a huge difference with the company with the organization and labeling of items, etc that had occurred while Guy was there full time.
When Alpha company was called to serve our country in Afghanistan, I again was so very grateful that my mentor Guy Stricklan would be accompanying me to fight in combat. While we were at Fort Carson, Colorado just prior to being shipped out, I was advised that my company was going to be split up and I would have to give up some of my pilots to go elsewhere. The one thing I knew for sure was that there was no way, I was going to release Guy from my company. In fact, during the spool up to go over, some of the higher command elements discovered what a valuable person Guy was and they requested his involvement in many of their operations. It was at this point that, I had better stop sending Guy to help the higher ups or there was a high likelihood that they would snatch him up.
When we arrived in country, I flew many missions with Guy Stricklan. There were three types of missions we would conduct, QRF, Deliberate, and Aerial escort missions. We had a very critical deliberate mission that we were going to have to conduct, requiring Apache support for up to 36 continual hours. I asked Guy to be the main planner for that based on the sensitivity of the mission, and of course, as expected he excelled and based on his planning efforts, rendered a very successful mission.
Whenever I had the opportunity to fly with Guy, it was apparent this man was a natural born aviator. He loved to fly. His heart was in it. He would push the aircraft to its limits. I can recall one time we were providing aerial support for a security patrol on the ground, based on Guy’s aggressive flying, the local personnel in the area actually advised the security patrol that if that Apache continues to make aggressive runs at us, we will call in Habib with his T-52 tank. Of course, this made Guy fly even more aggressively towards them. To our disappointment, the tank never showed up.
Just as has become apparent in New Braunfels, the same applied in Afghanistan, Guy Sticklan was liked by everyone. They had a little coffee shop type place on Bagram Air Base, and whenever you would go with Guy, everybody knew who he was. He was just a very charismatic likeable person.
Guy always spoke so highly of his daughter Kate. He relished the moments that she would come out to visit him. She was the highlight of his life. He would talk about her often.
I could go on and on about stories involving Guy Stricklan and his dog bear. I failed to mention, as most of you know, wherever Guy went, so did Bear, that included the armory, etc. I was surprised that Guy didn’t try to ship bear over to Afghanistan with us.
The type of man that Guy was is the type of man we should all try to become. I could speak for much longer regarding my mentor, my brother, my example, my hero, and my friend. I feel honored to have known such a great man. Guy Stricklan I love you and may God bless you.
