Kelly O’Connor, a 13-year member of the St. Thomas Public Safety department, returned last month from a yearlong military deployment, during which he served with the Minnesota Army National Guard’s 175th Forward Support Co.

Director of Public Safety Michael Barrett said having O’Connor gone for a year was a difficult adjustment, and he is glad to have him back.

“Kelly is very well-known and well-respected in the community,” Barrett said. “Anytime you have that type of connection with the community, in this case the Minneapolis campus, losing a person of that caliber for a year does affect the community. You come to work every day and you see the same people and you expect the same level of service response and the same smile every day, and that’s Kelly’s approach.”

O’Connor’s job while in Kuwait was convoy support. He drove Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Armored Vehicles, which he described as “glorified dump trucks.” The trucks were designed to take the impact of a mine explosion better than a Humvee.

O’Connor joined the military in 1992 after the Gulf War, but because he was still in college for law enforcement he wasn’t shipped to combat.

Initially O’Connor joined the Battle Dress Uniform army, which he said was much different from the Army Combat Uniform.

“The ACU uniform has a lot greater respect,” O’Connor said. “I get a lot of ‘thank you for your service’ compared to the BDU army; we didn’t have that.”

O’Connor was in the service for nine years doing various jobs including fire directions control, military police officer, and later helping to prepare soldiers to ship out.

“After all the shifting and back and forth, and some other things I didn’t believe in the military and decided to get out and work on my degrees,” O’Connor said.

It was after this first stint that O’Connor joined the St. Thomas Public Safety force while working on a bachelor’s degree in real estate. He eventually moved to first shift sergeant, and acquired his master’s degree in police and leadership. Seven years after leaving the military he decided to rejoin.

“It may have been a feeling of being left behind,” O’Connor said. “You become stagnant just being at the same place doing the same thing every day. “

O’Connor was supposed to go to Germany for the summer when he got orders to go to Kuwait.

“I was volun-told,” O’Connor joked.

O’Connor said he had a positive experience while he was in Kuwait and Iraq. He was originally supposed to go with some of his friends who were members of the National Guard’s 34th Infantry Division, which suffered a few casualties.

Some of O’Connor’s friends have been home for about three months now and are just starting to have nightmares. He said he doesn’t think he will have that sort of problem.

“I did get nervous, “ O’Connor said. “The first night I had a couple mortar rounds go over my head and you can hear the launching of it, and it kind of brings in the question of what would happen if it landed somewhere you are sleeping and you realize you are not as safe as you think you are.”

The 175th Forward Support Co. returned with all the soldiers it left with, which O’Connor credits to their training and the military equipment they were provided with.

Parallels between his two positions

O’Connor was a sergeant in both his role as a public safety officer and during his deployment. He was able to apply his master’s in police leadership in dealing with people and soldiers.

“I have learned in the master’s the difference between power position and politics, and there is politics in everything,” O’Connor said. “But I was still able to apply what I learned in my master’s and from the Public Safety department, all those experiences I was able to apply to leadership roles.”

O’Connor has retained his position as the first shift Minneapolis supervisor. When he returned he was retrained and learned the things he missed in the year he was gone. The training manual, which was one of the projects he worked on for his master’s, was finalized while he was gone. He spent the first few weeks going through it to adjust back into the Public Safety setting.

O’Connor said the time overseas has strengthened some of the skills he needs for his job here.

“Taking me out of the environment so I can have a fresh look to come back in, I have experienced that already,” O’Connor said. “I have been able to apply that towards the officer, taking out some the negativity and focus towards our main goal.”

Brian Matthews can be reached at bsmatthews@stthomas.edu.