by Jim Houck

U.S. Army E 7 Rocky Allen Henemyer 

Born on Father’s Day, June 16, 1957, in Wabash, Indiana, was a baby boy whose father was a huge fan of western movies (cowboy shows); therefore, he named the baby Rocky Allen after a cowboy star.

Rocky’s father passed away when Rocky was very young, and his mother (Caroline) remarried a man named Lennie Rose. Lennie became Rocky’s father in every way, and together, Lennie and Rocky’s mother raised him.

Rocky spent his entire youth in Wabash; in 1975, he graduated from Wabash High School. While in high school, he played tennis and helped out with some of the school plays as a behind-the-scenes guy. He worked the curtains and moved scenery around and helped with the lighting. While still in high school, he worked at a gas station to help pay for a 1963 Ford Falcon Future, his first car.  Rocky got hired on as summer help at the metal foundry and helped make water valves and water piping parts during his junior and senior year in high school. He was active in Boy Scouts, becoming an Eagle Scout when he was 17 years old, as well as an Arrow Scout. He was in love with the outdoors and camping, was into motorcycles, and loved fishing and hunting.

At 17 years of age, Rocky got a job at the factory where his dad worked, and where his grandfather worked after he retired from the Fire Department. Rocky still worked for the foundry for a year after graduating high school. He was then accepted at Indiana University at Bloomington, Indiana. He took classes, but he really didn’t know what he wanted to do, so he ended up majoring in “fun,” because he had lost focus for a time. He graduated in 1981 from Kelly School of Business, but was definitely not on the Dean’s list.

Jobs were tight, so Rocky ended up going to Arizona, where he got a job with Bell Telephone and Mountain Bell. He did that for a couple of years, but kept getting laid off. This was at the time that Bell and AT&T were splitting. He got laid off for the third time, ultimately getting called back again. He just wasn’t sure he could survive another layoff.  So, he went by a recruiter’s office. He had an uncle that was in the Army in WWII, and his birth father was in the Army in the Korean War. He said he didn’t know what he was thinking, but he didn’t even talk to anyone else but the Army recruiter. They told him they had a program where he could basically take a leave of absence from work and could keep crew seniority.

Rocky signed up for the Army for four years. He planned to save enough money to go back to college and earn a Master’s Degree, desiring to get serious about education, and eventually, to go back to work for Bell Telephone.

The date of Rocky’s enlistment was December 1982, and he reported for basic training in April 1983. He did his basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. When he finished at Fort Dix, he did his advanced training at Fort Sam in Houston, Texas, where he took a medical linguistic course and graduated from that course with distinguished honors. Rocky didn’t have placement after graduating and was sent to Walter Reed, which was a flagship from the Army Medical System at that time; this was his first duty assignment upon graduating from basic training. When he got there, he liked it but didn’t care for the big city, originating from a small town of 15,000 people. Rocky was stationed at Walter Reed, and he liked the job. However, he was doing property management, and he didn’t really care for that part of the medical linguistics, so he put himself on levy to go to Korea, figuring he would get to see the world. Rocky always liked to travel but didn’t get to travel when he was a kid, so he signed up to go to Korea. This was unusual, because most people were trying to get out of going to Korea, and here Rocky was trying to get out of Walter Reed to go to Korea.

Rocky met his wife-to-be, Denyse, in Washington D.C. At that time, she was working at American Indian National Bank, a minority bank. Denyse’s father was in charge of the Department of Indian affairs at that time and her mother worked for the Department of Education. Rocky and Denyse started dating and, wouldn’t you know it, he came up on assignment; he now didn’t want to go. He was assigned to Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. He had wanted to be assigned to Korea. Rocky asked Denyse if she would marry him and go to Hawaii with him for a four-year honeymoon. Denyse said yes, and they married on November 10, 1984, at Isleta Pueblo, New Mexico, on The U.S. Marine Corps Birthday, (Rocky’s father-in-law was a former Marine, a sniper in Vietnam). They left for Hawaii in December 1984, and that is where both children were born: Melissa Henemyer was born on August 7, 1885; Matthew Henemyer was born on March 21, 1988.

Rocky was fast tracking at that time and was promoted to E-5 in less than three years. He was selected as NCO of the quarter. He had actually competed as a specialist, and at first, they didn’t know what to do with him—since he won the award and came out on the promotion list—so that was when they gave him the NCO of the quarter award.

Bell wanted an answer as to whether Rocky was returning to work for them. This came at the four-year mark, and Rocky still had a year left on the Hawaii tour. Rocky was surprised when they went ahead and held his job for him for another year. He had to make a decision at the end of his Hawaii tour, but knowing he was promotable then, Rocky signed on for four more years.

The family waited until their son was old enough to fly and left Hawaii in the spring of 1988. Rocky got to choose where he wanted to be stationed, because it was his first enlistment. He chose Fort Meade, Maryland, so his wife could be back around her family. He was assigned to the 85th Medical Battalion at Fort Meade. He was in the 702nd Medical Clearing Company and made E-7 Staff Sergeant shortly after arriving at Fort Meade. While at Fort Meade, he decided to go to air-borne school, since the unit he was in fell under 18th air-borne corps and they had jump slots open.

At that time, Rocky was on a few missions to Honduras with the unit. He was in that unit for two years and then moved over to the Hospital at Fort Meade and took over as NYNCO Medical Logistics at the warehouse. One of the areas he was responsible for was site R, and it was during that time at Fort Meade when Desert Storm kicked off. He tried to go back to his other unit, because they got deployed; yet, they pulled another soldier from the Hospital instead. Rocky was already on call to go to Korea, so they figured they were going to lose him anyway and just shuffled him off to the unit. Rocky was being deployed to Canton, Ohio, so he joined up with them on his wife’s birthday in 1990. He then deployed to Saudi Arabia on the border of Iraq and was there a little over six months during the first Gulf War.

Prior to that, Rocky had enlisted again to go to Japan and had an assignment to Camp Zamia. During the war, they canceled everyone’s orders, so he ended up returning to Fort Meade, losing his dream assignment to Japan. Rocky was there for less than four months when he received orders for Germany. They sent him to Germany on his wife’s birthday in 1991, and because it was a short notice from when he got the assignment until he had to report, he couldn’t get concurrent travel. The family didn’t actually join Rocky until Easter of 1992. In Germany, he was assigned to 7th Medical Command under General Staff under medical supply and his job was related to draw down. While in Germany, Rocky helped draw down eleven hospitals to five. His job had him traveling to different medical facilities that the Army had in Europe, doing inspections and site existence visits, and draw downs of the hospitals as they turned them back over to the Germans. Rocky considered that a fun assignment, because he got to see a lot of Europe on Uncle Sam’s dime. His family really enjoyed that, even though they were a little disappointed they didn’t get to go to Japan; but, once they got to Germany, they had a good time. Rocky was able to pick the places for inspection, so he could schedule the family sight-seeing tours. While they were there they managed to visit Czechoslovakia, Italy, France, England, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, and all of Germany.

Rocky and his family had a great time while stationed in Germany, and he thinks that is how his daughter got such an interest in history. That tour of duty lasted four years. While Rocky was there, the 7th deactivated and became the European Regional Medical Command and the 30th Medical Brigade, and he was reassigned to the 30th Medical Brigade. It was a General Staff and Brigadier General Brady was First Commander. Rocky’s Boss became the Chief of Staff for the new unit.

At the end of that four years, Rocky’s Boss was talking to him about a Medical Logistics intern program that was at Fort Detrick, Maryland, that they had recently opened up to NCO’s. Before that, it was a course for Junior Midgrade Officers, Captains, and Majors. Rocky was in the second or third class after they opened it up for NCO’s. His boss recommended him for the course, so he applied. The way Rocky saw it was that if he was accepted he would take the assignment. If he was not accepted, he would stay in Germany, because he loved Germany. He got accepted and was assigned to Fort Detrick in December of 1995. He was in the internship from January to June—a six month program—and it basically taught him everything, from Battalion Level Medical logistics all the way up through Strategic Level Logistics (except for DLA Level). He also went through a contracting course at Fort Lee, Virginia.

Rocky got his first level in the contracting program and went through a facilities management course. He went all over Europe again, back to the depot. What he learned was how the transportation system worked and how the civilian sector practiced logistics, warehousing, and operations, and how the military did it. They kept kind of a big high level view of things. When Rocky graduated from that course, he got a utilization tour where he had to apply what he had learned. While he was in Germany, Rocky always had an interest in their Medical Logistics systems; he would hang around with the system guys and actually learned quite a bit. While he was there, he got selected to help with the fielding. They converted the Army Depot in Europe from a system called Sails to a new system—a Medilog system. When he graduated from the internship program at Fort Detrick, they tracked him into Medical Logistics information systems and he got put on a new program called Defense Medical and Standard Support.

Rocky was at Fort Detrick in uniform from 1996 until 2000, and had various jobs defining the new system for medical supply. He ran the service help desk for the system that they were fielding, and had five civilians working for him.

Rocky finally came down on assignment for Korea and reported to the 16th Medlog Battalion, which was a Depot Level operation that took care of the Pacific. He was the accountable officer for a while, in between officers; the rest of the time he was chief of medical logistics and supervised eight Korean Nationals and twenty to thirty military who worked in the warehouse for him. Rocky did that from 2000-2001.

When 9/11 happened, Rocky was in Korea. There was a big change in how everything operated on the peninsula from pre-9/11 to post-9/11. When 9/11 happened everything was on lockdown for 72 hours and everyone was recalled to base; no one knew what was happening. Rocky lived off base at the time and he had to bring all his gear in. He slept in the warehouse until they finally released him. Even after they released him from lockdown, there was a curfew and he had to sign out when he left base. He had to call in oncehe arrived at his quarters and he had to call from his quarters when coming into base. When he arrived at quarters, he was not allowed to leave; this lasted for a long time post-9/11. Rocky tried to come back to this area because his daughter was a senior at Walkersville High School, and the Army had decided Rocky needed to go to Fort Bragg, South Carolina, instead of somewhere close to home. So, he tried to extend the Korean Tour for another year, but they sent him to Fort Bragg. He was at Fort Bragg for approximately fourteen months. He then submitted his paper work to retire in April 2003 at the end of twenty years of service.

Rocky almost got caught up in the stop loss, because they were getting ready to deploy from Fort Bragg to Iraq, but he just made it by a couple of days and was able to retire. Rocky said what really drove the retirement was that the folks he had worked for at Fort Detrick asked him what his plans were after twenty years, basically offering him a job. He was really lucky in the respect that he did not have to apply or go through an interview process for the job, because he would be doing the same job as a civilian as he was doing as a soldier.

As a civilian, Rocky went to work at Fort Detrick in 2003, doing contract work for them as he did while in uniform. He did this for five years. In 2008, Rocky worked on medical logistic system, did building and training to Army Units, and worked on data stabilization and pharmacy interface piece. Rocky missed being with—and working with—soldiers. An opportunity came up through the same company he was working for to change contracts. He went to a program called MC4, a medical communications and casualties program. In 2008, Rocky deployed to Iraq as a contractor, supporting the systems that he had helped to build at Fort Detrick. MC4 was an Army component of a DOD Program that supported electronic medical record software for both inpatient and outpatient care and medical logistic software. Rocky has been doing that since 2008. He has been to Iraq multiple times, Afghanistan twice, on the program fielding training and supporting the software. That is the type of work Rocky still does. He has done this work for thirty years, either involved directly or indirectly with the Army.

Rocky’s family lived in the Walkersville area until he retired in 2003; he then bought a home in Thurmont. He and his family have been here ever since. I have been trying to interview Rocky for over two years, and am happy he finally gave in. He is a very knowledgeable person, very friendly and personable. I feel honored to know Rocky and to have had the privilege of writing about him and his family. Rocky is a member of AMVETS Post 7 Thurmont, and he does a lot of volunteer work at the Post. He is also in the Post 7 Honor Guard and participates in most Honor Guard activities. I used to go to the movies and enjoy the Rocky Allen cowboy movies, and I enjoy being around Rocky Allen Henemyer, and I think you would, too.