On a spring night in 1982, Assistant Division Commander Colin Powell sat in his home office atop a hill in Fort Carson and retooled his resume for civilian service.
Powell had been slapped with the worst performance review of his career and thought his military career had effectively been killed, he wrote in his autobiography, “My American Journey.”
Maj. Gen. John W. Hudachek, then the commander of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, and a man with a reputation for disagreeableness, had made no mention in his report of Powell’s potential to be a division commander, a role Powell had been sent to Fort Carson to prepare for.
“This report will probably end my career,” Powell told Hudachek, according to his telling of the incident. The report left Powell believing he would never be promoted again, Powell wrote in his book.
“I had no regrets,” Powell wrote. “I had done what I thought was right. Hudachek had done what he thought was right and graded me accordingly. I was not going to whine or appeal, get mad at Hudachek, or go into a funk. I would live with the consequences.”
The incident is perhaps Powell’s most important link to Colorado Springs, but it is not the only run-in between the military leader and a city whose identity is tied to the armed forces. Powell died on Monday at the age of 84.
Powell, of course, was not felled by the bad review. Higher-up military officials intervened, believing that Hudachek had unfairly penalized Powell for speaking up about issues he believed were harming morale at Fort Carson, an “intoxicating” post in a “handsome city,” Powell thought.
During his time in Colorado Springs, one of his daughters attended Cheyenne Mountain High School and another took ice skating classes at The Broadmoor.
Powell left Fort Carson the summer of 1982 for a post at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. On his way out he was presented with a statue of a cowboy sculpted by Colorado Springs’ Michael Garman and departed to little fanfare. But he would cross paths with Colorado Springs more than a decade later as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Powell in the in the 1990s suggested eliminating Air Force Space Command and rolling its functions into U.S. Strategic Command, a change that would have stripped Colorado Springs of an organization that has since grown into an industry central to the city’s identity.
But on a 1993 trip, one of his last as chairman, Powell changed his mind, telling The Gazette Telegraph that Space Command would not be eliminated any time soon. Almost 30 years later, it’s still headquartered in Colorado Springs as the core of a burgeoning space industry that includes U.S. Space Force installations and the annual Space Symposium.
In 1999, Powell visited the U.S. Air Force Academy to accept an award recognizing his contributions to national security.
That 1993 trip also included a stop at Carson, where Powell’s career had nearly ended. In the crowd of soldiers was 19-year-old Pvt. Nelson Vargas, whose career was just beginning.
“I’m glad to see an African American in a powerful position,” Vargas said at the time. “It makes me feel proud. It gives me something to look forward to.”
This content was originally published here.