By Nathan Hemminger
Lt. Col. Ben Gipe, who is the co-instructor of the ROTC program, said he thinks of himself as a sheepdog.
“There are three types of people in this world: the sheep, the wolves, and the sheepdogs. I’m a sheepdog, protecting all of the sheep from the wolves,” said Gipe.
This is certainly an accurate statement, considering Gipe’s military history and his passion for protecting his students. But even Gipe was not prepared for the tragedy that would befall the nation on Sept. 11, 2001.
Gipe said he will never forget where he was when the first plane hit the towers. He was working as felony drug probation officer in Clark county, Indiana. He said he was with his co-workers when a woman came into the room and told them to turn on the news.
His coworkers then began to turn to Gipe asking, “How could this happen?” They turned to Gipe because he flew fighters in the Marine Corps in his earlier years, and they were worried that it was some sort of malfunction. Gipe came to this conclusion that it must have been some sort of unavoidable error in the mechanics.
“If it comes to the point of an inevitable crash, any pilot worth his salt will try to avoid crashing into an over populated area,” he said.
It was not until the second plane hit that Gipe realized the tragedy that had just occurred, and what that tragedy foretold.
“I looked at the men standing around me, and I said, ‘Gentlemen, we are at war.’ Even thinking about that moment now makes my stomach upset. It just brings back a lot of terrible emotions,” said Gipe.
Gipe immediately wanted to do whatever he could for his country. He called up his friends from the Marine Corps and the Kentucky Guard, both of which he was retired from, and told them he was ready to fight. Sadly, his friends told them that he had been retired for too long, but that they appreciated the offer.
“I gave the same pitch to both of them, but they said they had no use for an old guy like me,” Gipe said with a chuckle.
However, Gipe was not going to let a minor factor like age stop him from being the sheepdog he was meant to be. He started working for the ROTC at Floyd Central in 2004, and he said he is training his students to be honest, responsible citizens and also giving them a strong sense of patriotism. If there are sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves, then Gipe said that he refers to his students as the lambs, and that he works to protect his students as if they were his own family.
Ten years ago, Gipe had an uneasiness in his stomach, knowing that our country was about to start a war on terror. 10 years from now, Gipe hopes that terror will be eradicated from the face of the Earth completely and that everyone will be able to live in peace. However, Gipe knows that right know he must do his best at being a sheepdog, because no one is going to stop being a wolf or a sheep.
“I think that instead of having everyone be a sheepdog, we should hope for less wolves, and we should try not to get angry at the sheep or the lambs,” he said.
