United States Army First Sergeant Roy Simmons

I will never forget the first time I saw him. It was a rainy day, the kind where water dripped off my fatigue cap in steady rivulets, my raincoat already soaked by the time I stepped into the Central Quarters—known to all of us as CQ. The air inside always carried a fresh scent, a result of the relentless mopping and scrubbing by cadets who manned it. This was where the commandant of Lyman Ward Military Academy kept his office, a place that hummed with authority.

There he stood, by the water fountain beside the CQ desk. He was a tall man, easily 6’3”. His jump boots gleamed with a mirror-like spit-shine finish, the hard toes catching the dim light. The boots were bloused with perfect precision under olive green fatigue pants, every line in his uniform crisp, his gig line flawless. Atop his head sat a red beret—the unmistakable mark of an elite Green Beret.

But it was his face that held my gaze. Scarred deeply, with a noticeable dent, it resembled the rugged terrain of a battlefield map. His hands bore the same marks—badly scarred, the skin textured like the pulp of an orange. His complexion was dark, his thick mustache a deep brown. He had the build of a man carved from stone—260, perhaps 270 pounds—and a baritone voice that rumbled through the room. To many cadets, the combination of his size, voice, and scars was terrifying. They whispered the nickname “Crater Face,” though never within his hearing.

I learned later that the scars told a brutal history. He had fought in World War II, helping to end totalitarianism in Europe and Asia. He served again in Korea with UN forces. And in Vietnam, during a mission gone horribly wrong, he and his unit were napalmed by friendly fire from American aircraft. He was the sole survivor. I pieced this together not from him—United States Army First Sergeant Roy Simmons never spoke of his past—but from hushed conversations with other instructors. At Lyman Ward Military Academy, he remained on active duty, serving as my Junior ROTC instructor. Ours was his first assignment to a military school.

United States Army First Sergeant Roy Simmons was the embodiment of military bearing—rigid posture, iron self-control. He never raised his voice, yet he commanded absolute authority. Fear was not a tool he wielded consciously; it was simply an aura he carried.

He shaped me in ways both profound and complex. In two years, I absorbed a level of discipline that takes some a lifetime to cultivate. He instilled in me a tolerance for pain—both physical and mental. My dedication to weight training took root under his influence, as did the resilience that carried me through six years of football. In 1984, at Curry College, I made a mid-season comeback after a severe eye injury sidelined me. In 1985, that same discipline propelled me through the grueling rigors of joining the University of Alabama Crimson Tide football team and sustained me through the lower gyms of their off-season training program.

Yet his influence came with a cost. I grew up too fast—my childhood effectively ended at eleven. His training taught me to wield my body as a weapon, rooted in a Spartan philosophy that demanded a strong mind and strong body. The discipline was invaluable, but it exacted a toll, stripping away something softer, something more innocent.