FORT SILL, Okla. -- He gave Fort Sill and his country almost 43 years.
He worked for 19 commanding generals, changed offices several times, saw countless change of commands and has had one wife that whole time.
Jon Long, who retired from his position as the Fort Sill public affairs officer June 30, is especially proud of that last one.
He joined the Army after graduating from Texas Christian University in 1967, coming to the Officer's Basic Course for a two-year commitment.
When he graduated from OBC, he fully expected a year somewhere in the United States and then to be shipped to Vietnam.
From a class of about 130, Long remembers he was among five that had orders to stay at Fort Sill. When they presented themselves to the personnel officer, the officer asked who had the journalism degree.
Young Lieutenant Long dutifully raised his hand and was ordered to present himself to the "information officer," as public affairs was known in 1967. He was placed under the tutelage of a civilian named Anne Powell, or "Miss P," who was in charge of working with the media.
"They weren't expecting me," Long said. "I learned a whole lot from her and that's where I spent my whole two years in the Army. I never received an assignment after the first year."
At the time, Long said Fort Sill was packed with more than 40,000 Soldiers and civilian employees.
After his commitment to the Army, Long returned to the Fort Worth area and became a cub reporter for the Fort Worth Press, which competed with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
"I did that job for about eight weeks and found out they wanted to make me the crime beat reporter," Long remembered. "I had no interest in hanging out in police stations and courthouses all night."
Fort Sill was never very far from Long's thoughts. His former boss in the public affairs office called trying to recruit him back. Finally, the deal was struck and Long headed back to the post, this time as a civilian employee.
"I realized I missed this place," he said with a chuckle. "A lot of it had to do with missing Fort Sill, but I was missing the life I had off-post, mostly in the church."
Long, this time with longer hair but "still looking like a kid," took his old job working for Miss P., met his wife, Laveta, and established relationships with the local media to get Fort Sill's story out to the public.
When he started, he said he used an old, black manual Underwood typewriter. Ink stains from carbon paper were common. After typing a news release, they were put on a mimeograph machine and copies were made for distribution to media outlets.
There is a storage closet at the head of the stairs on the second floor in McNair Hall. That room was once a radio broadcasting studio.
"We would do radio stories from there, we even had a military broadcaster assigned to the office. His job was to record our news releases and send them out to local radio stations," Long said.
The technological changes, both in the media and in the office, did much to move the public affairs world forward, he said.
"I thought it was a novelty, and I never expected to see news crews show up with television cameras on their shoulders."
Up to then, news was shot on 16mm movie cameras.
Typing stories on a word processor and printing them at a different location within the office took some getting used to.
When computers found their way into the office, some resisted mightily.
"A previous Cannoneer editor was probably one of the last people on post to get a computer," he said with a big smile.
But, he also admitted change can bring about good, too.
Being able to correct stories and releases as you type them on the computer, so simple and mundane today, was like a gift from heaven then.
Sending an e-mail about an event was the death of the press release. But, it wasn't uncommon for Long to have more than 200 e-mails a day toward the end of his career, of course, each of them a dire emergency.
After more than 42 years on the job, Long has some doozies to tell. But, there are a few that stick out.
"I recall three instances of a tracked vehicle being stolen by a Soldier in the middle of the night and getting off post," he said. "Two were howitzers and were early enough that people were still awake and so those calls came very quickly."
Long said anytime he receives a call from the media, at home, that begins with, "I'm sorry to bother you but ..." he knows that anything after "but" can't be good.
"Jan Stratton called me right at 10 p.m. one night and asked if I knew anything about the tank going down Fort Sill Boulevard. Well, Fort Sill doesn't have tanks, but I still didn't know anything about it. I called the military police desk and asked them and their reply was, 'How did you know about that'' and in frustration I said, 'Because there are four or five police cars and a news crew following it!"
A similiar incident caused some damage in Lawton. A tracked cargo carrier was stolen by a Soldier one night and went roaring through the town of Apache before stopping in a field. None of the Fort Sill units had reported anything missing. So, Long was sent to "find out what was going on."
"This was in the early 80s," Long said. "All these Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers were standing on the road and you couldn't even see the vehicle. When I introduced myself, the trooper was really upset because they had been calling for military police all night and here's this nerdy looking public affairs guy. That trooper was not happy."
Long and a young public affairs lieutenant eventually found the vehicle empty; the Soldier had apparently returned to post. Minutes later, a helicopter landed with the particular brigade commander, and the incident was wrapped up.
While the incidents were spaced years apart, the Soldiers responsible were all made aware of the wrath of the military code of justice.
No job is 100 percent sunshine. Long said his heart is heavy when he thinks of the tough days like in 1995 when an Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt accidentally dropped a bomb on an Army vehicle on Fort Sill's West Range, killing a captain.
"The driver of that vehicle was in my Sunday school class."
A CH-47 Chinook crashed and killed seven Soldiers, there were scandals involving drill sergeants at posts around the Army and, of course, there have been combat fatalities.
There are also more mundane stories that gained national attention; USA Today put Fort Sill mold on the front page in 2008.
"Big Army public affairs was getting ready to deal with that because they had experience, but we were able to show reporters that there was no story and the big network reporters canceled their interviews with the secretary of the Army because there was no story. The Army's chief of media called and told us whatever we were doing, keep doing it." Long said.
Getting the Fort Sill story, and more importantly, the Army story, out to the public is one of the pillars of the public affairs office. Long said developing a relationship with local media especially, and state and national media in general, is vitally important to the post.
"We've always had a supportive local media," he said. "If there ever was a problem, it was personality-driven or they weren't happy because we couldn't give them an answer on the spot. We've never had an overly hostile media here like at some other posts or bases in the country."
As he switches gears and begins a different track in life, the doting grandpa finally looks back with satisfaction on his more than four decades of service to his country and to Fort Sill.
He said there were good times, lots of laughter, serious times, times he was able to be a mentor and times he had to be the bad guy. But, he said, he tried never to lose his cool or his faith and to always do the right thing, whether those asking liked the answer or not.
"All I wanted to do was do a good job, raise a family, be a good father, be a decent husband, practice my faith and be considered a very good professional person. I think I did that," Long said.
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