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Ark City man worked his way up through the ranks

By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer
reporter@arkcity.net

Brad Renollet looked back on an eventful 30-year Navy career Wednesday. In his career he served onboard ship in just about every conflict throughout the world involving the United States.

Renollet said he grew up poor in Arkansas City and never considered that he would work his way up the naval ranks, finally reaching the rank of command master chief, the highest rank an enlisted man can earn.

The ships he served on supported U.S. efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Bosnia, Somalia.

But it's not the conflicts that made the biggest impression on him, he said. It's the men he served with.

"It's actually very hard to talk about (the battles)," Renollet said. "No military person wants to go to war. We do it because we're paid to do it, and to serve our country."

Renollet, 48, was fortunate to be congratulated just before his retirement by the Commander in Chief, President Bush.

He talked with Bush after the President's plane landed for a refueling stop on Diego Garcia, where Renollet was serving at a Navy support facility.

Bush congratulated him and asked him what he planned to do after his retirement, Renollet said.

"I told him I planned to take off the uniform and go serve somewhere else," he said.

As command master chief, Renollet was in charge of the "good order, discipline and morale" of the sailors on the island. He also was principal adviser to the commanding officer on the island.

There were 3,000 military and civilian personnel working there in support of the U.S. war effort in Iraq, he said.

Renollet has six bars of medals on his uniform. He said he is most proud of two -- a meritorious service award and a humanitarian service medal.

The humanitarian award stemmed from an incident in 1981 during which his ship picked up 148 Vietnamese boat people who were about to be attacked by pirates, he said.

"We brought them on ship and took care of them, and later let them off at the Philippines," Renollet said.

A year and a half after the rescue, on his birthday, Renollet visited a San Diego dry cleaners where he had been a customer. He brought in pictures of the boat people he had helped rescue. Employees showed the pictures to an elderly man in the back of the shop.

"He started crying, so I went back to see him and he was pointing to one of the men in a picture," he said. "It was his nephew. I told the old man that (the nephew) was in Seattle.

"That day I realized how significant that medal was."

Renollet is a strong Christian who credits his successful career to his family, particularly his mother, and to Jesus Christ.

"I do not think I would have been successful without the core values my mother put in my heart," Renollet said.

He recalled quitting the Navy temporarily, in 1981, to take care of his mother, Carolyn Renollet, when she was ill. He returned to the service on Pearl Harbor Day that year, Dec. 7.

"I promised God the Navy would be my mission field," he said.

Renollet invited his family to participate in his retirement ceremony held last October in Geuda Springs.

"I wanted a family ceremony," he said. "I took my mother, my dad and my son. They hadn't seen any military ceremony."

Renollet said one of the biggest satisfactions of his naval career was taking care of the sailors assigned to him -- "seeing the lights go on when they learned something," he said.

He said growing up in Ark City, he learned work at an early age to help his family survive.

"I started washing dishes at El Taco," he recalled. "I was washing dishes, and cooked using a deep fat fryer. Before I became a sailor at the age of 17, I knew how to run that restaurant."

The work ethic he developed in Ark City helped him move up through the ranks in the Navy, he said.

His advice to today's youth: "I'd say get away from drugs, booze; make your mark. If you want to do it, you can."

Above: President George W. Bush, center, walks with Command Master Chief Brad Renollet, far right, and other military personnel, after Air Force One lands at Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, where Renollet was serving at a Navy support facility.