MY HERO: The Simple Advice That Guided Me Through Life

A meeting in 1993 provided inspiration and a plan, which led to salvation when crisis hit

Terese Schlachter,

AARP Experience Counts

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En español

Published August 15, 2024

Greg Gadson at his home in Alexandria, Virginia.

Jared Soares

Somewhere deep in the chaotic crevices of Gregory Gadson’s home office in Alexandria, Virginia, there is a 30-year-old index card.

On it is a sketch of his projected military career. It was drawn in 1993, when Gadson was a first lieutenant, by then Maj. Rodney Anderson during upon their first meeting at the 82nd Airborne Division Headquarters in North Carolina.

Gadson went on to retire as a colonel while Anderson rose to the rank of major general.

“Yeah, I just came around a corner one day and said, ‘Hey, lemme talk to you a minute,’” Anderson tells AARP Experience Counts. Gadson complied. “I had no idea why he wanted to talk to me, but I figured he was a major, so I should go see him,” he recalls.

Anderson immediately saw something in Gadson. “He was a serious man of purpose and passion,” he says.

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In Anderson, Gadson saw a guiding light. “He was this beacon,” Gadson says. “We talked about what kinds of jobs I wanted to do, Fort Leavenworth ... the Army War College.”

Anderson provided Gadson with a series of waypoints, critical to his eventual success. And the senior officer wrote them all down on that card. Gadson took the card and throughout his career, followed the advice.

Gadson became a major. He attended the War College. He took one command, then another and served in every major war in which the United States engaged, including, as a lieutenant colonel, leading a newly formed artillery unit into Iraq.

Major General Rodney Anderson at Fort Bragg

Major General (Ret.) Rodney Anderson at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy

What was not on that card was the IED explosion, which cost Gadson both of his legs above the knees and caused nerve damage to his right arm.

Through Gadson’s long physical and emotional journey of recovery, it wasn’t Anderson’s timeline that was most valuable to the colonel. It was Anderson’s unyielding faith in God.

“Gen. Anderson taught me to love myself, taught me to love the Lord — his spiritual passion — he taught me how to harness that.” Indeed, with Gadson’s last conscious breath, as he laid in a pool of his own blood on Route Jackson in Iraq, he uttered a short prayer: God, don’t let me die here.

“I could have said a lot of things,” Gadson says, “But I said ‘God,’ in my last breath.”

Later, when Gadson was being wheeled on a stretcher into emergency surgery at what was then the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, he saw his father — Willie James Gadson — and Rodney Anderson in the elevator with him.

Gadson’s wife, Kim, had to convince Greg, when he came out of the anesthesia, that Anderson was on deployment in Afghanistan. There was no way he could have been at Walter Reed that morning.

“I can see that as real today as it was 16 years ago,” Gadson says of the vision, tearing up.

“I might have been in Afghanistan, but my spirit was there in that elevator with you,” Anderson says.

“Gen. Anderson’s confidence in living his faith is infectious,” Gadson says of his mentor. “How do you live it in the context of soldiering? Because that’s dirty business, that’s hard business and it can be in conflict, in some ways, with what Christ might do or say.”

It’s been Anderson who has provided the context in which those two beliefs can coexist. “Gen. Anderson is so comfortable in his spirituality and sharing it and living it,” Gadson says.

Anderson believes certain parables in the Bible reveal Jesus’ respect for the military. “That’s one of the things that make us such close brothers — our commitment to the profession and our faith and trust in the Lord,” he says.

In the 16 years since he was wounded, Gadson has become a motivational speaker, addressing audiences of all beliefs and creeds, across the country. As he begins each talk he loudly and proudly credits his success, his very survival, to his lord and savior.

As for that index card, Gadson may not be able to locate it in his office, but he knows it is never far from his heart. “Kim and I have used that strategy to plan our lives, together and as individuals. I’ve even passed it along to my kids.”

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Terese Schlachter is a writer and producer of videos and documentaries and the co-author with Gregory Gadson of Finding Waypoints: A Warrior’s Journey Toward Peace and Purpose, published by Schaffner Press. She is a three-time Emmy Award-winning television producer and founder and chief storyteller of Ridgeback Communications. Her short film Picture Perfect was nominated for Best Short at the DC Independent Film Festival. Terese lives in Shady Side, Maryland, with her husband, Jon, and Lillian, a Rhodesian Ridgeback.

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