Michael Rodriguez is a retired Green Beret. He has faced danger, endless injuries and worked through unimaginable invisible wounds. Now, he’s on a mission to memorialize an entire generation of warfighters and give back to the community he loves.
“My first hero was my father, who was a Vietnam War Veteran. I have a grandfather who served in World War II and uncles who were part of the D-Day invasion,” he shared. “I grew up in southern New Mexico, which was part of Mexico before becoming part of the United States. Though I didn’t grow up in a typical military community, everyone around me had served and fought.”
As a kid, he played “Army” and loved looking at the pictures of his grandfathers in uniform. Though Rodriguez would ask them questions, they never really talked about their time at war.
“What struck me, looking back, is that when they talked about their experiences, it was never about them. They always wanted to tell me about their friends,” he added. “When they spoke about the men who never came home, it was with reverence and love.”
He recalled being inspired to serve based on those stories and recognizing the value of taking care of your familia, a lesson instilled at a young age. Though Rodriguez graduated high school at 16 and wanted to go right into the fight during the Gulf War, he had to wait. It was a struggle to get his parents to sign off on allowing him to enlist at 17.
“I always knew I wanted to be a Green Beret, but I knew there was a process to get to that point, and one of those steps was being Airborne. So I signed up, even though I had never flown in my life. I was sitting on the plane with those recruiters and threw up on myself,” he laughed.
The next time he was on a plane, Rodriguez was jumping out of it. After finishing Airborne school, he was sent to the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum. Before long, Somalia was heating up.
“I wasn’t even in the Army for eight months before I deployed in 1993 to Somalia. This is where my vision of what the military does expanded. We fought bad guys, but we also had a humanitarian mission. Operation Restore Hope was all of that,” he explained. “My job, outside of fighting in skirmishes, was to secure food in Mogadishu and bring it back to the camps where these children were. We helped NGOs serve these people because warlords kept trying to hijack and steal all of the aid. You see these kids, all their parents are dead, with extended bellies, no teeth and malnourished. We would show up, and they’d have the most beautiful smiles you’d ever seen. That’s true oppression and survival.”
A year later, Rodriguez deployed to Haiti during the coup attempt and spent eight months assisting in securing democracy for its people. By 1997, he was finally put in for selection and secured his spot at the qualification course. Two years later, he became an 18 Delta Green Beret and wore the title until he was medically retired due to numerous combat injuries in 2013.
“I squeezed out 21 years, but in the end, it was time,” he added.
Rodriguez was open in sharing that during his 10 deployments, he had hidden brain injuries. He recalled self-treating a head and face fracture during a rollover in Afghanistan. One of the IED explosions led to blindness in one eye for five months, necessitating a special lens for vision. As a sniper instructor during his last assignment, he began having seizures.
There were also invisible wounds, the kind that led to chemical dependency and months of treatment. During his time at Walter Reed Medical Center, Rodriguez discovered art therapy, which was transformative for him.
“I had to figure out what my identity was outside of being a special operator or a soldier. I also started questioning my worth and whether I’d be able to provide for my three sons,” he shared. “After I completed treatment, the mother of my children went on a 15-month deployment of her own with the Army, and I was left in charge of our kids. It was eye-opening and gave me another lens to view service.”
A year later, he met former President George W. Bush and, from 2015 to 2018, served as a member of his Military Service Initiative Advisory Council. The two formed a close relationship, and Bush painted him for his Portraits of Courage collection and released them in a book.
In 2016, he was approached by the Global War on Terror Memorial Foundation.
“I didn’t know anything about building a memorial, but I said I would help, and in 2017 we introduced the bill to get it built. It was signed by President Trump after passing the House and the Senate. Then it was time to collect the data to make it happen,” Rodriguez explained. “Everyone involved wanted it on the National Mall, but nothing had been approved to be built there since 2003. I was told in 2019 that it would be impossible, but that impossible bill was signed by President Biden two years later.”
Now, eight and a half years later, the GWOT memorial is in the final design phases, and Rodriguez is proud to be at the helm as the organization’s CEO. One of the things he implemented early on was ensuring there was input from all veterans.
“We surveyed 20,000 veterans from World War II to now to get their thoughts on what should be included in the memorial,” he shared.
As Rodriguez reflects on all the pivotal moments that shaped his service and life afterward, it all connects to advice his father once gave him before he shipped off to boot camp.
“He warned me that I would be put into situations to do things I would think about for the rest of my life and be put in situations that I didn’t always understand. He encouraged me never to be ashamed of it, which was really insightful of him,” he said. “But then he said the thing that I’ve always carried with me: People would assume I wouldn’t be able to do a number of things, and whatever was asked of me—do more.”
And he has, every moment since.
To learn more about the GWOT Memorial Foundation, click here.