Remembering (Ret.) General Carl W. Stiner, USA

TOP PHOTO: Gen. Colin Powell, Sue Stiner(wife of General Carl Stiner), Gail Roy and General Carl Stiner along with a large contingent of Campbell Countians.

By Fred Cole

LAFOLLETTE, TN (SPECIAL TO WLAF) – A great many people throughout the United States and the world have a Gen. Carl Stiner story to tell, and in the general’s home state of Tennessee, those stories number in the thousands. He was a man of the people, and in the days since his passing many of those stories have been told. My story began with the Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future in April 1997, when Gen. Colin Powell launched a national effort called America’s Promise-The Alliance for Youth, intended to give every American child a better chance for a good future. Powell made a rousing clarion call for America to marshal talent and resources from all sectors of American life to create Communities of Promise.

At the time, I was a relative newcomer to living in Campbell County but had been here long enough to know it was a community with many needs. The tip of the spear leading the county toward much needed revival, improvement, and change, was the legendary retired Army Col. Tommy C. Stiner, and I began peppering him with ideas for becoming the first Community of Promise in Tennessee. Task one was to convince Tom’s brother, Gen. Carl Wade Stiner, to lend his celebrity and fame as a great American army general to our endeavors. Task two was to reunite Powell and Stiner once again, but this time in a battle fighting for young people in Campbell County, in Tennessee, and across the nation.

Once committed to building a Community of Promise, Stiner jumped in trying to help us become successful. Working with community volunteers was sometimes a little unsettling for a man used to having battalions and brigades of troops obey his every order. The non-profit world was not the military, and he would say working with volunteers was like herding cats. Even so, Campbell County’s Promise went on to become a model for the nation. We formed an alliance with Knoxville’s Promise and hosted a regional summit that included Powell and numerous other celebrities and public figures. It was a success. Over time we raised over a million dollars for youth programs in Campbell County.

I came to know Stiner as very approachable and down-to-earth. During the time we were working on America’s Promise we traveled to many meetings and events, and I heard many fascinating stories. Everywhere we went people crowded around wanting to shake his hand and get a picture, and he was gracious and seemed to enjoy it. When talking about his war-hero celebrity he once said to me, “A tree never gets so big that a little dog can’t come along and pee on it,” trying to downplay his own importance.

I don’t remember a time when I saw Stiner speak without prepared remarks he most often had hand-written. He once told me that for someone like him what you say could end up on the front page of the Washington Post the next day, so it better be right.

When the general was finishing up his book, Shadow Warriors, written with the help of his wife Sue, author Tom Clancy, and the writer Tony Koltz who put it all together, they sent him the book galley’s, and he asked me to read through them and comment. I knew at that stage in the process of book publication no comment of mine was going to matter, but it was still a great honor. I was in my Indian River Marina days at the time. Koltz came down, and we went out on Norris Lake to talk about the book in a Sea-Ray cabin cruiser that belonged to the general’s daughter, Carla, and her husband Jim. For some reason I ended up sick that day. I still decided to go, but spent most of the afternoon curled up in the bed in the cabin below deck. Every now and then Stiner would poke his head down below and ask, “You still alive down there?”

I have had the unlikely opportunity to know three different four-star generals, and all of them were men who were straight arrows. What they had in common was the strong embrace of core and traditional morals and values and standards with little deviation throughout life in ways few people ever do, and they led and mentored others in how to do the same. Stiner was always about improving the whole person as in this example he told me about one time. At times when his troops were waiting for transportation buses, instead of just standing around he would have them do push-ups, as part of readiness training, which seemed a little extreme to me but I guess that is why they were special forces, and he ended up being a four-star general. He did push-ups too.

After America’s Promise I didn’t see Stiner as often, but several years ago our paths crossed, and we had an opportunity to talk for a while. In our conversation I tried thanking him for all he had done for me and everybody else. He started responding with his usual thank and praise others approach to this kind of exchange but I stopped him, and focused him on a moment that might likely be our last. This wasn’t a perfunctory thank you for your service, but a thank you rooted in deeply heart felt gratitude for all the general had done for me personally and the projects we championed. He seemed to realize and appreciate that, yea, he had done something good; he had made a difference. We shook hands and kind of man-hugged. It was the last time I saw him.

While a renown, legendary, and celebrated super-hero, Stiner was mostly a regular guy who ended up at the crossroads of history on more than one occasion. In those times he had the intestinal fortitude and wherewithal to rise and meet the challenge at hand like few ever do. In a life well-lived he succeeded in a spectacular way in his chosen profession, his personal and family life, and in his service to others. In a forest of mostly average trees Stiner was an epic, mammoth, giant of a tree, never really bothered or deterred from his missions in life by the wee-wee of little or big dogs.

RIP General Carl Wade Stiner. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED – 06/09/2022-6AM)