FORT RUCKER, Ala. (June 26, 2015) -- The past and present of the warrant officer cohort merged as two U.S. Army Warrant Officer Candidate School awards were renamed in honor of two storied veterans and presented to two of the Army's newest warrant officers June 17.
The school renamed its Distinguished Honor Graduate Award and Leadership Award to the CW3 (R) Doris Allen Distinguished Honor Graduate Award and the CW4 (R) William L. Ruf Award, respectively, and presented the awards for the first time under their new monikers during a graduation ceremony at the U.S. Army Aviation Museum.
"I think it is great that we are able to honor two heroes of our Army and the warrant officer cohort," said Col. Garry L. Thompson, U.S. Army Warrant Officer Career College commandant. "We've been presenting the awards to candidates for over 20 years, so naming the awards was long overdue."
It was a process, he added, that took nearly a year after submitting and coordinating nomination packets.
The first recipients of the renamed awards were W01 Emanuel Medinasoto, recipient of the CW3 (R) Doris Allen DHG Award, and W01 Matthew Cook, recipient of the CW4 (R) William L. Ruf Award.
Allen, who is a Vietnam-era veteran and served 30 years in the Army, was available to present the award during the ceremony, and she said she was honored to do so.
"I was invited to attend and I consider it quite an honor for them to invite me and for me to be there," she said. "I think it's historic. To lend authenticity is so important, and I want to be able to be the one that can come and do that here.
"It's also just a proud moment," she continued. "If I had no humility, I'd be jumping on the ceiling. After all that I've been through, it's just an honor -- period."
Allen enlisted into the Women's Army Corp in 1950 and entered the Army as an entertainment specialist at the Adjutant General School in 1951 at Fort Lee, Virginia. She had a storied career, assigned as a radio broadcast specialist at Camp Stoneman, California, and served five years as an information specialist for the headquarters at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, before completing French language training in 1963 and becoming the first military female trained in a prisoner of war interrogation course at the U.S. Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird, Maryland.
As a specialist seven, Allen reported to Vietnam as the senior intelligence analyst for Army Operations Center, Headquarters, U.S. Army at Long Binh, Vietnam. She began her second tour in Vietnam and by spring of 1970 she was appointed as a warrant officer -- one of only nine female warrant officers in military intelligence and one of only 23 in the Army.
She returned to the U.S. in September of 1970 after completing her third tour in Vietnam, and she served as an instructor for prisoner of war interrogations. She would be promoted to chief warrant officer three before retiring from the Army in 1980.
The late Ruf, whose wife, Kim, was available to present the award, is well known in the Aviation world and even has a street named after him on Fort Rucker.
He was a pioneer in Aviation, having graduated from the first rotary-wing flight class at Fort Rucker in 1955. He eventually went on to serve as a helicopter pilot for two presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.
Ruf also served as an infantryman in World War II, as well as a pilot in the Korean War, and volunteered as an Aviator in the Vietnam War. During his 26-year Army career, he accumulated more than 16,000 total flight hours, 1,200 of which were in combat, before retiring in 1967. He continued to serve as a flight instructor after his Army service.
Regardless of the storied lives of the two warrant officers the awards are named after, Allen said the takeaway for young Soldiers should be that nothing in the Army is a single effort, but it is the efforts of many that make the Army great.
"When you're in the military, if you don't do it together then it won't get done," said Allen. "We're born, we live and we die. The best we can do is to live the best we can through it all."
Related Links:
USAACE and Fort Rucker on Twitter
Social Sharing