Lackland honors general who started as recruit
Richard Coleman was the commander no one saw coming.
He quit the 10th grade and joined the Air Force in 1956 with a friend, learning his trade from senior noncommissioned officers who had fought in World War II and Korea. Coleman served in Vietnam and later earned a college degree and became an officer.
Now 79, Coleman was saluted Monday afternoon at the Security Forces Museum at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, where friends and family celebrated an unveiling of his portrait, to take its place along with other airmen in the building’s Hall of Honor.
When he retired in 2000, he was one of only nine enlistees who had risen to general, closing out a career that ran 43 years, four months and two days — at the time, the longest in Air Force history.
But neither distinction was his most vital legacy. Talk with those who know, and they’ll tell you that Coleman imprinted his character and ethos into the Air Force’s Security Forces field.
“I think if you can capture everything we want to be, everything we should be, everything we are, would it be one person — it’s him,” Maj. Gen. Brad Spacy, 56, commander of the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center at Lackland, said Monday.
“When I met him here the first time, I was a captain teaching base defense at the Security Forces Academy,” Spacy said. “And he lectured us instructors … drawing from his experience in Vietnam and the Philippines and all around. And we were so held by that. Everything he said reached into us and resonated so clearly, and we thought, ‘Yes! If only he was in charge.’ ”
Monday’s ceremony, speeches and salutes from two Security Forces airmen who handed him a folded U.S. flag offered an opportunity for all to take stock of a career that went far beyond chevrons and stars.
A military training instructor, small-arms instructor, operations officer, five-time squadron commander and group commander, Coleman revolutionized Security Forces with the help of now-retired Gen. Ronald Fogleman, then Air Force chief of staff. They re-envisioned the career field by opening the Security Forces Center at Lackland, with leadership split between there and Washington, D.C.
Coleman created the 820th Security Forces Group based at Moody AFB in Valdosta, Ga., a rapid-deployment unit that defends Air Force bases. A consolidated Security Forces saw changes in the way military working dogs and handlers were trained.
The falcon that is the signature of the beret crest worn by every Security Forces member was Coleman’s invention.
“That’s the least significant thing he did, but it symbolizes how he drew us together as a force in a way we never had been,” Spacy said of the crest, which is also called a beret flash. “We needed it at that time and it made us ready for what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Colemand imbued his command with “all of the mental toughness, all of the pride” found in the career field, Fogleman said.
“I think he appealed to a warrior spirit in the Security Forces people. I think that’s what attracted people to it and he set very high standards, and people like to be in organizations that have high standards,” he said.
Retired Chief Master Sgt. Jerry Nelson, the master of ceremonies, said Coleman’s “footprint is all over Security Forces” and clicked off achievements that included serving in combat as an enlisted man and officer, and helping lead the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. He was the officer in charge of Security Forces from March to May of 1975 at Tan Son Nhut Air Base as communist forces took over South Vietnam.
“What he does for Security Forces and what he’s done for 44 years, that was the love of his life, and it’s hard to find somebody who did a job that long,” said Nelson, 70, of San Antonio. “He still gets emotional when he talks about it.”
That was clear as Coleman made his way to the lectern. Standing before him were his daughters, Christina and Shannon Lee, and a son, Dean. Both he and his daughters are cancer survivors. Coleman’s wife, Maggie, died of cancer two years ago.
“Don’t let it define you. Be who you are, fight it and get on with your life,” he said when asked in an interview about lessons learned from those health battles.
In his speech, Coleman talked of joining the Air Force at 17.
“I was born to do what I did. Somebody asked me one time, ‘Hey, how come you stayed there so long?’ I said, ‘That’s the first family I had since I left home. I was so comfortable with it I thought I’d stay for a while. But I didn’t know it was going to be for so long.’ ”