All graduates of the U.S. Army Warrant Officer Career College have big shoes to fill, and recent changes to the school's top awards will be an excellent reminder of that fact.
The U.S. Army Warrant Officer Career College's Distinguished Honor Graduate and Leadership awards have been recently renamed to recognize the incredible accomplishments of retired chief warrant officers Doris Allen and William Ruf. The monumental change was formerly announced at a ceremony Wednesday , June 17, at the Fort Rucker Aviation Museum, in which Allen and Kim Ruf, widow of the late William Ruf, were in attendance. The awards will now be called the "CW3 (R) Doris Allen Distinguished Honor Graduate Award" and the "CW4 (R) William L. Ruf Leadership Award." The first recipients of the newly renamed awards were warrant officers Emanuel Medinasoto and Matthew D. Cooke, respectively.
"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, commandant of the U.S. Army Warrant Officer Career College. "We've been presenting the awards to candidates for more than 20 years; so, naming the awards was long overdue."
At the rank of specialist seven in the Women's Army Corps, Allen -- whose nickname is "Lucki" -- volunteered for Vietnam at the age of 40 in 1967. She served as the senior intelligence analyst at the Army Operations Center, Headquarters, U.S. Army at Long Binh, Vietnam. She later served in the position of supervisor for the Security Division of the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Security, Plans, and Operations, Headquarters, 1st Logistical Command. She was appointed as a warrant officer in the spring of 1970. At the time of her appointment, she was one of only nine female warrant officers in Military Intelligence and one of only 23 in the entire Army. At the Military Assistance Command Vietnam in Saigon, she was officer in charge of the Translation Branch, Combined Documents Exploitation Center, where all captured enemy documents were translated and analyzed. She saw documents naming her on a list of human targets to be eliminated and decided to end her third Vietnam tour.
Allen's assignments after Vietnam included tours at the Army Intelligence Center and School at Fort Holabird, Md., and Fort Huachuca, Ariz.; a student at the Defense Language Institute -- completing the French and German courses; with the intelligence unit at the Presidio of San Francisco; as a Special Agent with a Military Intelligence Brigade in Germany; and as the Senior Counterintelligence Agent and Security Manager at the Presidio of San Francisco. She was the first female graduate of the Interrogation of Prisoners of War Course at Fort Holabird and later served as an instructor for the course. Allen was promoted to Chief Warrant Officer 3 in 1978, and retired in 1980 after a distinguished 30-year career.
"I had the pleasure of spending the entire day of the graduation with Mrs. Allen as we went up to Tuskegee University where she graduated from in 1949," said Chief Warrant Officer Joseph R. Scarpill, commander of 1st Warrant Officer Company, U.S. Army Warrant Officer Career College. "She is such a phenomenal woman and most deserving of the award. Her dedication to lifelong learning is truly evident in her constant pursuit of making herself more knowledgeable on world events, not to mention the fact the book she wrote and she always has a book in her hand."
William "Willie" Ruf enlisted in the Army at age eighteen and served in the infantry in World War II where he was captured, but escaped to rejoin the war. In 1955, he graduated with the first Helicopter Pilot Class at Fort Rucker, and later saw action as a pilot in the Korean War, the Lebanon crisis and the Vietnam conflict. During these engagements, he accumulated 1,200 combat flying hours. He became a member of the Army Executive Flight Detachment (Presidential Flight) in 1959, serving as the helicopter pilot for presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Later he served as an instructor pilot at Fort Rucker for five years accumulating 16,000 total flying hours. After 26 years of service, he retired from the Army in 1967 with the rank of Chief Warrant Officer 4.
The Distinguished Honor Graduate is the top student in each class, and the winner of the Leadership Award is selected by the candidates' fellow class members.
"This has been a long process that's taken nearly a year," Thompson said. "CW5 John Howze, the college's proponency chief, was largely responsible for putting together the nomination packets and coordinating with the 17 branches. CW4 Joe Scarpill and his team at 1st Warrant Officer Company were responsible for the great ceremony honoring these two individuals. Additionally, Military Officers Association of America agreed to sponsor each award to honor chief warrant officers Allen and Ruf."
The U.S. Army Warrant Officer Career College's mission is to educate and train warrant officer candidates and senior warrant officers at key points in their careers. The organization serves as the focal point for U.S Army warrant officer professional and leader development matters.
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