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Penico tracks the places he’s been alone with

red pins, his wife’s travels with green, and
the spots they’ve visited together with blue.

ministrative assistant at the facility and
a crew chief on the KC 135 (a Boeing

707 airframe with refueling capacity)
in the Air Force Reserve based on Alcoa

Highway. They were married in 1979.
Along with many nuclear projects

in the post-Three Mile Island era, the
Clinch reactor was ended by Congress

in 1983.
For 10 years, Penico ran his own

consulting firm, offering total security
design. When Sharon’s refueling group

unit went abroad, Penico sometimes
went along. When her unit was de-

security guards in u.S. embassies in 15 to full colonel and gave daily updates to ployed in Desert Storm I, it brought
countries from Japan to New Zealand, Secretary of State William Rogers. The the family total of wars taken part in

and as far west as Rangoon, Burma.
process there was informal and unstruc- to five.
In his two years on that job, he visited tured: Rogers would drop by Penico’s Eventually Penico got tired of con-

each embassy twice each year, flew office and ask, “Can you brief me?”
sulting and went to uT for his master’s
some 400,000 miles, and was promoted In 1970, Penico was ordered back to degree in historical geography, which

to major.
okinawa as Special Services officer at was a cinch given all the places he’d
1964 took him back to 29 Palms, Camp Butler, basically commanding all lived and traveled around the globe. Af-

where he took over as executive of- Marines in the Far East. on okinawa ter earning his degree in 1989, he taught
ficer of a Hawk Missile Battalion. A he learned Japanese. “The university at the Clinch Academy and then the oak

year later, he went with his battalion of Maryland ran courses on okinawa, Ridge Continuing Education Program.
to Vietnam for two years and earned a and what really helped me was that I After 34 years of marriage, he and

promotion to lieutenant colonel.
had the opportunity to speak it every Sharon continue to plan trips and find
“A Hawk Missile Battalion is heavy day,” he says.
new interests. Not long ago he took

logistics, with 2 2 ton trucks,” he In 1973, it was back to the Pentagon, some friends on a tour of Philadelphia,
says. “Nobody had ever commanded a working for the Chief of Naval opera- his hometown, which included a stop

Hawk Missile Battalion for that length tions, managing the 10,000 Marines at the meat market where some scenes
of time.” So, being an authority on the charged with security at Naval Sta- were filmed for the first Rocky movie.

subject, he taught the Hawk system tions around the world. “The largest “I looked down and there was a plaque
for three years at the Commander & part was rebuilding our effort for the commemorating those scenes from the

general Staff College in oregon.
protection of nuclear weapons. For movie. I loved it.”
In 1968, Penico was assigned to the example, we had contingency plans for Penico took part in the Honors Air

National Military Command Center moving weapons from Sicily to Spain, flight to D.C. in october, and he and
where he had his conversation with depending on circumstances.”
Sharon are planning their trip to the

Defense Secretary Laird. The Penta- In 1976, after 33 years of service, he Pyramids and the Suez Canal. But he
gon briefing process was formal and retired from the Marines and took a is open to any opportunities to share

structured. “You’d brief one general at job running the nuclear security at the what he’s learned over his lifetime. “I
6 a.m., then give the same briefing to Clinch River Breeder Reactor in oak love teaching,” he says. “I’m available

the next level guy at 7 a.m., all the way Ridge, a joint project of u.S. Atomic for lectures anytime.”
up to the chair.”
Energy Commission, TVA, and the

This job led to another briefing national electric utility industry.
Brooks Clark is a Knoxville freelancer who wrote his
job, across the Potomac at the State At the Clinch River facility, Penico irst Cityview story, in November 2002, on the true

Department, where he was promoted
met and started dating Sharon, an ad-
story behind the song and movie Thunder Road.

70 cityviewmag.com january february 2014