This position provides leadership to current operations, oversight and emerging mission capabilities, and technologies advocacy for the Soldiers of the COARNG as well as ensures readiness, relevance and a fully modernized force. It in simple terms, this position is the advocate and standard bearer for all things related to the National Guard space mission.

For the last three years, Brig. Gen. Stuart C. Pike held this position. He is retiring after 33 years of service, which opened up the position for Col. Robert W. Enzenauer to be promoted to brigadier general. A three-part ceremony honored these two events, as well as the change of responsibility for the space mission, July 10 in Watkins, Colo.

“I have been a Soldier for 35 years and married for 28 years,” Pike said in his retirement ceremony. “My wife has only known me as a Soldier. That is about to change.” The statement about change elicited smiles and a few chuckles – if not suspicious disbelief.

During the ceremony’s invocation, COARNG Chaplain Col. Andrew Meverden, or Chaplain Andy as he is affectionately known, remarked, “One of these men saved my career the other saved my life.” The simple statement couldn’t help but pique someone’s interest. The two events that tie these three men together began decades ago.

Pike originally enlisted to the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in 1975. In 1977, he graduated from Officer Candidate School. As the honor graduate, he was able to choose his next assignment, Fort Carson, Colo. Because of budget constraints under President Carter, when his tour was finished he chose to transfer to the Inactive Ready Reserve and finished his degree in economics at the University of Colorado – the same university he would receive a master’s in management science four years later.

While in the IRR, he attended the Infantry Officer Advance Course and was involved in the staff work that developed the Ranger Regimental System we know today. Because of his efforts, he was offered a chance to take the Special Forces Qualification course, a dream he always had.

Shortly after becoming qualified, Pike joined the COARNG’s 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group. He served with the SF for 14 years and eventually commanded the battalion.

In 1998, as a the 5/19th commander, Pike persuaded then-Lt. Col. Enzenauer, to leave his position as the COARNG’s state flight surgeon and become the SF battalion’s surgeon. Over breakfast one day, Pike told Enzenauer, “The best job in the Army anywhere is to lead an SF Battalion. Perhaps the second best job is the battalion surgeon. Taking care of guys is leading.”Pike was not only persuasive, but he must have been right, because Enzenauer spent more than 10 years in that position.

It was this position that earned Enzenauer the privilege of wearing the Special Forces patch on his right sleeve.

Both he and Meverden deployed together as one of the first Colorado National Guard units into Afghanistan in 2001. Early on in the war, the conditions were austere at best and Soldiers were enduring the Afghan winter with personally procured kerosene and wood burning stoves.

The day before New Year’s Eve 2002, Meverden’s wood burning stove was not assembled properly and was filling his quarters with smoke. Enzenauer saw the smoke pouring out of Meverden’s quarters and rushed in to find Meverden unconscious in bed. He opened the windows and called the SF medics.

Meverden was rushed to the aid station and provided oxygen until he could be medically evacuated to the International Security Force Hospital in Kabul and later to the Army hospital at Bagram Air Base. After 24 hours of ventilation treatment, he was returned to duty. However, he wasn’t returned to his quarters. He had to spend the next three weeks bunking between Enzenauer and the dentist, Col. Daniel E. Savitske. “We only had one chaplain. We couldn’t afford to lose him,” Enzenauer would often recount of the situation. Without Enzenauer’s help, Meverden wouldn’t have had a new year.

Shortly after his return from Afghanistan, Meverden became the 89th Troop Command brigade chaplain. Meverden went to then-Col. Pike, who was now commanding the entire brigade, and expressed his desire to retire. Meverden had cited struggles with personal and career issues and was convinced it was the right thing to do. Pike wasn’t so convinced, and explained to Meverden that he wasn’t the only one struggling with personal issues and the COARNG needed him. According to Pike, this struck a personal chord and Meverden decided to stay.

Meverden later became the CONG state chaplain. Pike, Enzenauer and Meverden together pioneered the Reintegration Retreat Program. Pike approved the program and fought for its funding. Enzenauer provided medical briefs early on. The program model was sent to the National Guard Bureau, which forwarded it to all the state chaplains.  Minnesota added pre-mobilization events to Meverden’s model, which is now the Department of Defense’s Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program. The pioneering spirit that created the program continues to make it unique in the Guard.

If it weren’t for Pike’s intervention, the reintegration retreat that every Colorado Guardsman is afforded may not be what it is today – if even existed at all. And, if Pike didn’t persuade Enzenauer to join SF, who would have walked past Meverden’s smoke-filled-quarters that December day?

As a civilian, Pike works as the emergency preparedness coordinator for the University of Colorado-Denver at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo. It was this very campus, in 1986, where then-Maj. Enzenauer first came to practice. The 1975 U.S. Military Academy graduate chose Colorado believing that, for an ophthalmological surgeon, it beat out his other choices of Texas, Washington state and Washington D.C.

His desire to serve a 30-year active duty career was thwarted by the 1995 Base Realignment and Closure act. Fitzsimmons was on that list. With the thought of having to work for someone else doing the same job he was doing then, Enzenauer opted to retire.

While at Fitzsimmons, Enzenauer was both the head of ophthalmology and the flight surgeon. Since the COARNG did not have its own flight surgeon, numerous aviators and SF Soldiers came to him to be cleared. Many of the Colorado Guard friendships he developed in that position influenced him to join the Guard family. Since he had always wanted a long military career, shortly after his active duty retirement, he started the process of joining the Guard.

Currently, Enzenauer is the head of pediatric ophthalmology at the Children’s Hospital in Aurora, Colo. Since joining the Army National Guard, Enzenauer has been a professor at the University of Illinois, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Memphis, and finally where the journey all began, the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine, located at the same campus where Fitzsimons once stood.

It may seem strange to have a doctor take on this responsibility. Enzenauer said in the ceremony, “I am sure there is at least some skepticism about my serving in this role. It goes something like this: ‘Enz is a good guy but he’s the doc!’”

But Enzenauer is no stranger to science and technology – or its advocacy. He has a bachelor’s in nuclear engineering, a doctorate in medicine, and is certified in aviation medicine, ophthalmology and pediatrics, and the American College of Physician Executives recently awarded fellowship to Enzenauer for demonstrating significant and enduring contributions to the advancement of medical management.

In this family that is the National Guard, our lives and careers both military and civilian are often intertwined, more so than we realize, until we look back upon that path and reflect. As we look at the path that lies before Brig. Gen. Enzenauer and wonder where it will cross again, we know that the space mission has strong advocate.