A historian with his own history

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Marcy Copeland
  • 56th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
LUKE AIR FORCE BASE, Arizona --  Richard Griset seems like a very quiet and reserved man and appears to be just another face at Luke Air Force Base. That is until people meet him.

Serving as a historian, Griset is responsible for preserving Luke's history and heritage while piecing together missing fragments from the base's 74-year history.

"To get a history job was my goal," Griset said. "To do something in history is what I wanted to do with my retirement. I am one of those people who can't really retire. I will keep working until I can't."

Griset was born and raised in Fallbrook, California, and attended Fallbrook Union High School graduating in 1973. He obtained a Reserve Officers Training Corps scholarship to attend the University of Southern California.

The Vietnam War was beginning to wind down and after attending USC for one year, Griset took an opportunity to attend the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

At the time, basic training was about six weeks long," Griset said. "Then you started freshman year, which was more or less a continuation of basic. It wasn't as intense, but you still had to sit at attention when you ate and had to ask permission to ask a question. We had to march on the marble strips the entire year."

With each passing year, class status became a little easier. Griset entered the academy to become a pilot but was unable to realize his dream due to a medical condition. He graduated in 1978 and went for the next best thing, working on aircraft.

"I wanted to fly fighters," Griset said. "Since I couldn't do that, I chose the career that would let me get as close to them as possible, which was aircraft maintenance."

His technical education training at Chanute Air Force Base in Champaign County, Illinois, was six months long. He left Illinois and traveled to England where he was stationed at Royal Air Force Bentwaters for three years.

From there, Griset journeyed to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma where he served three and a half years. Next was the Naval Air Station Keflavik, Iceland. He then drove across Iceland, rode the ferry and drove through northern Europe to Ramstein Air Base, Germany, where he worked on the United States Air Forces in Europe staff.

Griset arrived at Luke where he served as the last 405th Equipment Maintenance Squadron commander, then as chief of maintenance for the 555th Fighter Squadron for two years. He left Luke and went to Norfolk, Virginia, spent three years at U.S. Atlantic Command at which point he turned right around and came back to Luke to help stand up the 21st Fighter Squadron as chief of maintenance for two years. In a whirlwind, he was sent back to the Atlantic Command which then became Joint Forces Command. Then, he went next door to teach at the Joint Force Staff College.

After 28 years of service and more than a dozen bases, Griset retired in 2006 as a lieutenant colonel with a bachelor's and master's degrees in history.

"The transition is tough, no matter who you are or what you do," Griset remarked. "You are used to being part of a unit. You spend 20 or more years in the culture and then all of a sudden you step out and start doing something different. It can be scary. It takes a while and the best thing for anyone to remember is to just relax. You're not the first to go through retiring from the military, and you won't be the last. Everyone gets through it. It may just take a while. Just be patient and be kind to yourself."

With his retirement from active-duty service, Griset was hired for the intelligence wing historian position at Langley Air Force Base. When the Luke wing historian position opened in 2010, he was selected. He has put in more than 500 overtime hours in eighteen months and deployed twice in support of his historian positions. He enjoys the heat, sings in the Orpheus Male Chorus of Phoenix and plans to write books about 19th-century American history after he retires from his historian position.

"I've seen the Aurora Borealis in Iceland, which was amazing," he said. "I've played the northern most golf course in the world. Driving to Germany from Iceland was neat. I still get a thrill watching airplanes take off. I still love it. Feeling the sound waves beat on your chest. The reflection of the purple taxi way lights in the rain at Bentwater when we had no exterior lighting was so beautiful with the beacon lights flashing in the dark. The most fun I had was the focused logistic war game and traveling the world.

"I got to travel, got to see some great things. I never really thought it was all that special until I spoke with people during a history tour on base. They asked about my background. As I talked about the things I've done, they would go 'oh wow.' There are so few of us who serve in the military compared to the population that most of them cannot relate to what we do. It makes it very special. I was just a farm boy. Getting out and getting to see the world was just really cool."