Speaking of 9/11, I would like to take this time to pay a special tribute to someone that I personally know. I was stationed on Guam with Him and his wife where they both worked as one of "My Troops".
July 30, 1957 - September 11, 2001
Was Looking Forward to Civilian Life
Gregg Harold Smallwood was six months away from finishing his 20-year career in the Navy when he was killed in the Pentagon attack Sept. 11. The chief petty officer and father of three girls planned to retire in the summer, move to Texas with his wife, Lisa, and begin a new life as a civilian.
“We have decided on Austin,” he wrote in his last e-mail to his sister, Laura Smallwood. “The transition has already begun.”
On Sept. 11, the 44-year-old chief information systems technician for the Navy was working in his newly renovated first floor office when a hijacked American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon. He was buried with full military honors Oct. 6 at Arlington National Cemetery.
“Like so many others whose lives were cut short by the tragic events of Sept. 11, my brother Gregg was an average guy,” Laura Smallwood said in her eulogy. “He was probably at his desk, doing his job and, knowing Gregg, recalculating the days to his retirement.”
Gregg Smallwood grew up in Houston and Dallas and enlisted in the Navy after completing high school in Pittsburgh.
He met his wife, Lisa, when both were in the Navy and stationed in Texas, and they were married on Jan. 25, 1979. Smallwood left the Navy in 1981, but re-enlisted after seven years in the private sector.
His Navy assignments included duty aboard a guided missile destroyer, the Henry B. Wilson; at the Navy Communications Area Master Station in Guam; aboard the frigate Reasoner; at the Naval Telecommunications Station in Diego Garcia; and in San Diego and Kingsville, Texas. In July 1998, he joined the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon.
Born in Oklahoma, Smallwood was -- like his father, an electrical engineer for Westinghouse -– a tall, lanky, mild-mannered man, according to his brother-in-law, Tommy Meers.
“Gregg was the sort of fellow you could underestimate if you judged him solely by his speaking demeanor,” Meers wrote in an e-mail to family members. “But he was downright eloquent with pen in hand.”
Letters Smallwood sent to his family while he was stationed away from home, Meers said, reveal “a profound, very pragmatic concern for his family -– as though each letter contained some kernel of carefully thought out advice for one or each of his three daughters.”
Smallwood is survived by his wife and daughters Wendy, 18, Lynn, 17, and Valerie, 16, all of Woodbridge, Va.; his parents, Harold and Florence Smallwood, of Overland Park, Kan.; and sister Laura Smallwood of Stone Mountain, Ga.
A fund has been set up to benefit the daughters, the Gregg Smallwood Memorial Fund, P.O. Box 2258, Decatur, Ga., 30021-2258.
Since his assignment to the Pentagon, Smallwood was enjoying having more time with his family –- even though he was working long hours, his sister said.
“He was one of those people who, if he didn’t get something done by the time work was over, he stayed at work until it was done,” she said.
When his assignment at the Pentagon was drawing to a close, she said, he managed to pull some strings to be able to stay there until his retirement.
“He was not somebody who loved the military,” his sister said in an interview. “He was a military sort in his demeanor and his speech. But he stayed in it mainly as a necessity. He couldn’t wait to be done with it.”
In her eulogy, Smallwood concluded that her brother “wasn’t such an average guy after all.
“In a time where more marriages fail than succeed, he not only had a successful marriage but, despite some hardships along the way, a loving one . . . In a time where most people’s priorities have been skewed toward material gain, Gregg’s most prized possession was his family.”
Gregg Harold Smallwood
Gregg Harold Smallwood's Navy career took him across the United States and the South Pacific. The 44-year-old information systems technician first set sail on the Henry B. Wilson, a guided missile destroyer, in November 1976. He then served in San Diego and Kingsville, Tex.
Smallwood, who rose to the rank of chief in his specialty, moved to the Navy Communications Area Master Station in Guam in October 1979 for two years. He then left the Navy for seven years, returning in 1988 to serve on the frigate Reasoner. After a couple of stints in California, Smallwood traveled to the Indian Ocean to work at the Naval Computer Telecommunications Station in Diego Garcia. In July 1998, he joined the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon.
The Navy lists his home as Overland Park, Kan.
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