Posted on 09/09/2002 6:25:31 PM PDT by STARWISE
From Battle To Bible, War General Is True-Blue
Most call him sir. His grandchildren call him Pooh. But the whole world listens when Gen. Tommy Franks, leader of the war on terrorism, speaks.
From Battle To Bible, War General Is True-Blue
TAMPA - The four stars stitched to his collars reveal his rank, but his eyes are the key to Army Gen. Tommy Franks.
They are glacial blue, and when he talks about the war on terror - the war he's running as the man in charge of U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base - they flare as if somewhere inside a switch has been thrown.
``If this doesn't go well, it's my fault,'' the general says. ``Because not a single thing I've asked for has not been granted.''
The words are spoken bluntly; the eyes seem to gleam with a surge of current. On matters of war, Tommy Franks is all business.
Indeed, his has become one of America's best-known voices of the war on terror, as he regularly briefs a worldwide television audience on the campaign's successes and failures.
He didn't seek the role. Fame has never held an attraction for him.
``If I'm not doing something to figure out how to kill the enemy or keep our people alive, I'd rather not do it,'' Franks says. ``But I learned the importance of keeping America informed,'' the general continues in his Texas drawl. He grew up in Midland, the West Texas oil town. ``What I've learned in the last 10 or 11 months is that I'm not comfortable [in the public eye]. Soldiers are not well prepared to do this.''
That tells you much about Tommy Franks - whether it's easy going or not, he gets the job done.
General Is Straight Shooter
Perhaps you would expect that kind of self-discipline from the general running America's war on terror. But there is more about Franks that isn't as obvious. He is a man of paradoxes.
Franks - at 57 still rangy, with iron-gray hair and the look of a rough- knuckled country boy - is as comfortable in battle as he is playing with his grandchildren, who call him Pooh after the make-believe bear.
And he's as relaxed at diplomatic receptions as he is buried under the hood of the vintage Mustang he used to keep parked in his garage.
When he talks about himself, he's often self-deprecating. But put him in the witness chair before a congressional committee taking testimony on the hunt for Osama bin Laden and he is straight as a Texas highway.
He is just as straight about his values.
``My faith in God is important,'' he says. ``My belief in country is important. My relationship with my family is important. The things that Mom and Dad tell you growing up are important. The military infrastructure grew me. What I've learned to be important is a lifelong love of learning.''
No, maybe he's not yet the household name that Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf was in 1991's war with Iraq. He isn't as blustery or flamboyant. He's milder and more circumspect.
But Tommy Franks has come into his own as an American war icon. And he's learning to fill his role almost as comfortably as he wears his brown and tan desert fatigues.
Portrait of a Leader
``Tommy Franks just comes across like a good ol' boy. It's almost deceptive how he comes across,'' says Joe House, one of the general's friends.
``Then he suddenly transforms into a very knowledgeable tactician and politician, or just the ideal person you'd want in charge. He makes troops want to follow him. He relates to them extremely well, which goes back to when he was one of them. I don't think Tommy Franks ever planned to be a general. I don't think there's an ambitious bone in his body.''
He's a man of simple pleasures: He enjoys a good cigar, a chilled margarita and driving his old white pickup - although the last is not as easy as it used to be. When Franks goes someplace, he's usually trailed by a sizable security detail.
He loves his family, too - fiercely.
And, oh yes, he loves the Army. The men and women under his command are his extended family, and he travels halfway around the world to see them once a month. To them, he is a soldier's soldier.
His only child, Jacqueline Franks Matlock - Jacqy, to her friends, and an Army wife just like her mother, Cathy - wishes her father would give himself more credit sometimes. So does her mother, Jacqy says. But Jacqy appreciates his style.
``It's a part of his genius,'' she says. ``It's a way to talk to anybody, by being self-deprecating. But pity the fool that takes that for unintelligent.''
Whatever his weaknesses, a lack of intelligence is not among them. The proof, his peers say, is in the job he does. To wage the war effectively, he has had to coax operational cooperation from a variety of allies with conflicting agendas.
He meets regularly or talks with the most powerful players in the country, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president occasionally summons him to the White House.
He has had to navigate the shoals on Capitol Hill. And he has the eyes of the world, the cameras and the critics, watching - always watching.
``He's proven himself to be a tremendous war fighter, but also much more,'' observes John Tilelli, a retired general who has known Franks since 1983 and was his superior during Operation Desert Storm. ``He's had to stretch himself and embrace all these other facets. He's had to be in the limelight. He's exhibited the competencies of a diplomat.''
That he has been able to stretch himself has probably been due in no small measure to his wife, Cathy.
``He and my mother are very close,'' says daughter Jacqy. ``She is a great supporter, his rock.''
Wife Is His Rock
They married 30-plus years ago. He was a newly promoted Army captain, just starting his climb through the ranks. She was a high school history teacher. Together, they traveled the world. They have been stationed in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Ethiopia, Egypt, Korea and elsewhere. Among the interests they share is a thirst for learning about the local history and culture.
As Franks' military responsibilities grew, so did his diplomatic obligations. And whenever possible, he made sure his wife was at his side.
Her husband ``felt it was important for me to travel with him and for people he meets - always the leaders of their countries - to see an American family,'' Cathy Franks said in an interview with The Tampa Tribune in November.
She still accompanies him on some of his many trips around the globe, and often is at his media briefings. Their eyes meet often. They smile. It's plain that they're close.
A reporter once asked Cathy Franks about the long path her husband has traveled. She said simply, ``You're not born a general.''
He wasn't a West Point man, which could have counted against him in a branch of the service that is long on tradition and has always favored its academy people.
Instead, after his upbringing in a working-class family in Midland and his high school graduation, he set off in the early 1960s for the University of Texas in Austin.
College didn't suit him well just then. He was there only a few years.
``I was asked to leave,'' he jokes. He joined the Army.
He completed Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill, Okla., then went to Vietnam, where he learned war the hard way, on the battlefield. During his career, he has earned three Bronze Stars with Vs for valor and three Purple Hearts.
Vietnam may be one of the reasons he remains so close to his troops. It was a hard time to be a soldier. Many scorned the military, and those who stayed in became an extended family.
Beyond his affection for his troops, there is respect. From them, he learns the feel of the war.
``I go to people who know,'' he says. ``And the people who know are the ones on the ground.''
He married Cathy - then Cathy Carley - when he came home. Then the Army sent him back to school to get his degree - it's in business - from the University of Texas in Arlington. Later, he earned a master's in public administration at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.
Watching The World
The demands of his job are staggering.
When he's out of town and not at the Pentagon or on Capitol Hill, he's usually visiting one of the 25 countries in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and East Africa for which CentCom has U.S. military responsibility. Besides Afghanistan, they include places like Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. The command watches not only the politics in these countries, but also the mood. Around CentCom, it's called keeping an eye on ``the street.''
When he's home, Franks is often at his desk at CentCom headquarters before dawn. He's been known to show up there at 2 or 3 a.m. when a big operation is hatching or his sleep pattern is off because he's just back from the far side of the world.
Inside Franks' office, a half-dozen mannequins dressed in the wedding garb of countries like Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan - representing countries where CentCom has responsibility - line one wall. Next to the office is a place called the ``trophy room,'' containing other memorabilia from the region. This is Franks' inner sanctum, where he meets with his senior staff at 7 or 7:30 a.m. to discuss the previous day's operations and the ones soon to come. Here, too, are secure communications links through which he can talk to the Pentagon, the White House and military posts worldwide.
The work is consuming, the pay not nearly what he might be earning in civilian life (a four-star Army general with his tenure earns about $150,000 a year), the responsibilities enormous, and the sacrifices many - never more so than now.
It used to be that the general and his wife got away every few months to go see Jacqy, her husband and the grandchildren - a boy and a girl.
``But now, it's once every nine months,'' says Jacqy, who describes her father as intensely private and just as intense about his family. And ``When we see him, he's still always working, because things have drastically changed.''
About the only other fun he has time for is the occasional game of golf with whatever partners he can round up at the base, or watching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play football. He played a little football himself back at Robert E. Lee High School in Midland, and it's not unusual for him to open one of his media briefings by mentioning the Bucs.
The rest of the time he runs the war - an important distinction: The war does not run him.
He was talking about the war recently with a group of newspaper people. Talking about it in his soft, West Texas drawl. Right away, his blue eyes sharpened.
Afghanistan is no longer a haven for terrorists, he said.
``All that has changed since last October. Afghanistan is inhospitable to terrorists, despite all the mess one sees there. It's a mess in terms of uncertainty that one finds with people who really haven't had a government for a long time.''
U.S. troops will be there a good while longer, the general continued. Not to fight, necessarily, but to help stabilize the new government. The war on terrorism, meanwhile, will spread elsewhere.
Of bin Laden, Franks said he's not sure where he is or whether he's alive.
``One thing I'm sure of, if he's alive, he's on the move, and that's not as good for him,'' Franks said.
If he's out there, you get the feeling Franks and his people will find him.
That's the man's style. Whether it's easy going or not, he gets the job done
Great post. Thank you. (^:
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