Walker County native hopes to inspire others
A Walker County native hopes his life story will inspire young people to overcome life’s challenges.
Donald Randolph Madden said he is proud to have taught entrepreneurship seminars at the School of Business at his alma mater, Tuskegee University. Madden, who is black, has also taught entrepreneurship classes in Washington D.C., has made millions of dollars through his businesses and has helped others to do so, too.
“Opportunities are out there even though I came up in a time when it was very difficult in the 1950s,” Madden said, adding he attributes his success to working hard and talking over his plans with God.
Madden, the son of Reese and Gussie Madden of the West Armuchee community outside LaFayette, graduated from Emery Street High School in Dalton in 1957. He retired from the U.S. Army at the rank of colonel after serving 25 years, five of which he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces, or Green Berets.
Madden began his military career in 1963 as a graduate of Tuskegee, then called Tuskegee Institute, through its ROTC at the rank of second lieutenant. He served in Korea, China, Greece and
Okinawa, as well as serving three tours during the Vietnam conflict.
He said God gave him three miracles of life during his time in Vietnam so that he could return home to help others.
He experienced his first miracle when a ground-toair missile locked onto the helicopter in which he was flying to visit troops for a mission in Cambodia. The pilot, believing everyone was about to die, allowed the chopper to start falling from the sky; the missile missed it because of the rapid descent.
His second miracle occurred when the transmission went out in another helicopter in which he was flying. Due to the rotary failure, Madden expected the helicopter would crash, but the pilot managed to land it by skidding on a airstrip.
He experienced a third miracle when an air-to-ground missile locked on to the Cessna 6-passenger plane in which he was flying.
“Somehow with the help of God, we got out of all of those,” he said. The memories of these close calls are still distressing decades later, he said.
“My mother’s prayers and God got me safe from the war all three times,” he said. “Praying works!”
A major highlight of his career came when he was selected to command a Special Forces bat
talion of 10 A Teams and Command and Control Unit deployed from Okinawa to South Vietnam on a top secret mission to train the Vietnamese army in special combat fighting methods.
The training was conducted throughout the country with added missions after arrival in Vietnam to train the regular and popular forces on special security techniques to safeguard the ammunition and petroleum facilities throughout the country.
The third mission was to train the Cambodian Special Forces in methods of operating secret medium-range reconnaissance in and out of Cambodia.
This secret mission deployed from Okinawa was named Task Force Madden in his honor. He held the rank of captain at the time.
“One of my greatest accomplishments is being able to command a battalion-size Green Beret unit as a captain,” he said. He is proud of successfully completing the assigned mission.
A lieutenant colonel usually commands a unit this size. Being a young black captain who was chosen for that command over other higher-ranking officers who wanted that position was a “real honor in those days,” he explained.
Another significant honor came when he was selected as a member of the U.S. team to negotiate Okinawa’s return to Japan.
He was selected to attend the military’s Race Relations Institute when race relations in the military were so adverse that the war was interrupted to make improvements. The graduates were released to teach military and Department of Defense personnel how to work and to fight together.
He had experienced this racial tension first-hand.
A young man when the segregation era ended, he recalled an incident during that time when he might have been killed near a Northwest Georgia bridge if some raccoon hunters, carrying guns and accompanied by their dogs, had spotted him on a date with a white woman. He said that close call was more terrifying than his experiences in Vietnam.
His training enhanced his civilian employment directing the civil rights officers with the Department of the Navy headquarters, the Department of the Interior and the Interstate Commerce Commission in Washington D.C.
He earned a bachelor of science degree from Tuskegee; a master’s degree in counseling and guidance from Worcester State University in Worcester, Mass.; and an advanced master’s in counselling psychology from Anna Maria College in Paxton, Mass. He studied for his Ph.D. in psychology at George Washington University in Washington D.C.
He served more than 30 years as president and owner of DRM & Associates Inc., a multi-million dollar business consisting of seven different entities and employing more than 150 personnel. Some of those businesses still operate today.
He has provided low-income housing, childcare and veterans’ care homes, he said. He has had a childcare business in the District of Columbia for more than 40 years.
At the time of this interview, Madden said he was in Atlanta where he is working on new projects, including some houses that will be used for adult daycare. He
also purchased a church there that will continue to operate as a church for Sunday services and Thursday night Bible study, but throughout the week it will become an adult daycare to serve 50-60 adults, he said.
He owns properties from Florida to the District of Columbia, he said.
He bought the first of those properties, a house, in 1967 and still owns it. The same tenant lived in that house for 27 years, and he never raised the rent during that time. He said he appreciated having a good tenant.
“I try to help people, and I’ve gotten my payback from the man above,” he said.
He has retired three times but continues to work because he enjoys what he does. He is still healthy and enjoys life, he said.
He is a master mason and brother of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. He served three years on the board of directors for the National Psycho Therapy Foundation.
As a young man, he played semiprofessional baseball with the Chattanooga All Stars and later played baseball for the Golden Tigers at Tuskegee University, earning a four-year letter of honor.
Madden currently lives with his family in Fort Washington, Md. He and his wife, Shirley, have been married 44 years, he said.
The couple have five children: Donald Lawrence Sr. (LaFayette, Ga.), Horace Madden (Atlanta, Ga.), Tonya Mitchell (Birmingham, Ala.), Dr. Alesia MaddenRandolph and Donald R. Madden II (both of Maryland).