KALONA

When you hear that someone had a career in the Military, serving during conflicts in both Vietnam and Iraq, you might imagine a certain kind of experience.  However, for Kalona resident Larry Geno, 69, his memories are largely positive.  For the most part, he spent time helping countries around the world build and improve, and he has the photos to prove it.

Geno got his start serving in the Air Force, joining in 1974 after scoring a “picket fence” on his aptitude test, meaning he could enter any Military Occupational Specialty – MOS – of his choosing. After choosing electronics, Geno began the path to become an Automatic Tracking Radar Repairman.

Immediately after finishing basic training and MOS school, Geno moved to Arizona for three years during the Vietnam War where he would work on radar systems until the war ended.

Afterwards, Geno moved back to Iowa with wife Laura to raise a family. Together, they had four children: Angela, Joshua, Micah and Zach.

In 1985, Geno re-entered college life at Luther College in Decorah. He also joined the Army Reserve at this time to help pay for school with the GI Bill.

After an over 20-year career with the Army Reserve, Geno retired and eventually moved to Kalona in 2021, following his son Joshua, who is a registered nurse at the VA Hospital in Iowa City and lives in Wellman with his family.

Since moving, Geno has become a staple in the community. He is on the board of directors at the Kalona Historical Village. He joined the Kalona Optimist Club. He’s a member at the VFW in Riverside. He helps at the Kalona Area Chamber of Commerce. He’s a part of the Planning and Zoning Commission. He volunteers. And to round it off, Geno is a member of a motorcycle club.

“[Friends] remind me that I have failed at retirement,” Geno said with a chuckle, adding, “I wanted to go to Key West, my wife said no [so they would be closer to family].”

Annual Training: The first step

Geno’s favorite aspect of the military: times spent building up, not tearing down. Joining the ranks of an engineering battalion unit in 1985 meant Geno would spend his summer annual training excursions building -- overseeing projects all over the world -- two weeks at a time.

This led to three trips to Honduras; two trips to Germany and Guatemala; and one trip to Panama and El Salvador, earning Geno nine ribbons to designate his trips overseas.

Geno’s first training mission overseas was in Honduras. Their task was simple.

“My unit, Decorah, was one of the first ones into the area. This road was up in the mountains of Honduras, huge pine trees and so forth,” Geno said. “Our job was to remove the trees from the right of way of this new road. Basically, that two-week period I spent with a chainsaw cutting trees.”

This challenged the idea that the Army was only sent overseas for violence. Geno, always watchful for photographic opportunities, was rarely seen without a camera to document each and every step his troops made.

“One of the people at the college was a friend of my wife and she was a Quaker. She was under the impression that the only thing the United States military ever did down in Central America was kill people. When she found out I was going down there, she wasn’t happy,” Geno said. “When I came back and showed her pictures of what we were doing, she had no idea that we did that type of thing. The thing is, it’s not just in Central America.”

There were other moments that helped prove how important an engineering battalion can be. Soldiers bring their knowledge of trades from their civilian jobs; those without that knowledge do a great deal of learning. It works both ways.

No moment better encapsulated this than when Geno worked alongside a Marine engineering unit in either Guatemala or El Salvador – Geno could not quite remember where – but recalled they worked alongside an active volcano, building a school to be earthquake-proof while the Marines worked on constructing wells. 

“One of the wells they put in, the pump didn’t work. [The Marine captain] called back and asked if we had anybody who could get the water pump working and our captain said yes,” Geno said. “[Our captain] sends him up to fix the pump. He goes up there. I’m not sure what he did, but it didn’t take him very long [to fix the pump].”

“This Marine captain, she thanks this young man, ‘Glad that you could come up here and fix the pump. You’re a plumber in your [battalion], right?’ He goes, ‘No, I’m the company clerk,’” Geno said with a vociferous laugh. “It goes to show the Army Reserve, National Guard, they pull in so many other things. That is just amazing.”

Annual Training: A public service

Geno’s favorite missions involved building schools for communities in need, noting that their appreciation was the best part.

Geno helped in the construction of at least three schools. His first was a school high on a mountain in Honduras in 1991. The road was in such poor condition that the vehicles transporting supplies needed to nail boards to the roof, and sometimes, cement blocks would break simply being transported in the vehicle.

Residents gathered daily to watch the troops work on the building. Geno’s battalion had a medic who tended the ill and injured as well, furthering their contribution to that community.

They eventually celebrated with a small party after the school was finished.

“There’s an appreciation of doing it. Especially schools,” Geno said. “A school, you have the students and the teachers and so forth coming, watching, because this is going to be their new [school].”

When the general in charge of the project came to view the various schools the company was working on, he insisted on seeing the school on the mountain first, signaling it was the toughest project and the most rewarding to see done. Geno noted the other groups worked on flatter plains along a highway for their school projects.

Another time, when Geno assisted in the building of a school in Guatemala, he was asked to keep a low profile since the country was dealing with a communist threat.

“The locals wanted us to put our information down: US Army, because they’re proud of what we did for them,” Geno said. “My order was not to do anything like that because what would happen is the communists would come in and destroy it. We had to tell them thanks, but no thanks.”

The final overseas story Geno shared was when his company traveled to Guatemala in 1999 after a hurricane.

Geno was in charge of re-building a bridge in place of one that collapsed. Without instruction, his battalion built the bridge in their two-week time span.

“I found out later that the US Army was watching what we were doing because they did not have an instruction book on how to [build a bridge in this particular way],” Geno said. “They wrote the instructions from what we did.”

This brief history does not cover the full story. Geno assisted in numerous projects within the US and had even more overseas stories.

“As I told my wife, if I didn’t have fun doing this, I never would have lasted over 20 years,” Geno said.

The Iraq War

Because he was thinking of retiring, Geno stepped down from his position as Platoon Sergeant of the Decorah unit. After he was denied retirement, Geno took up the same position in the Alpha Company of Iowa City to begin prep for deployment to Iraq.

Geno’s unit deployed in March of 2003 and Geno again shifted units, taking up the construction inspector role in a Dubuque unit despite never actually having worked in Dubuque.

This role allowed Geno to oversee many projects. He was also in Iraq when the US captured Saddam Hussein.

“The army decided to actually make a prison for all these high-ranking prisoners we were catching. That didn’t take so long to build. But it was kind of interesting when you look at it; all the towers around this prison had the guns pointing out,” Geno said. “These guys are happy to be in prison because they have all their buddies that want to kill them, that’s why all the guns are pointed out.”

Geno served overseas with his son, Joshua, and a step-son of his sister-in-law, also named Joshua. Geno left a great impact on his son, a main reason for why he also joined the Army Reserve.

“[Joshua Geno joined] without even asking me or telling me because if he were to talk to me first, I would have told him to go to the Air Force, not the Army,” Geno said. “[Joshua] said that I had so many stories about going to Central America and these other places, he wanted to be part of that. That’s why he joined the engineering unit in Decorah [and] for a short time, he was in my platoon.”

Geno would finish his tour, returning home in May of 2004; he then finalized paperwork to retire in 2005. He spent the remainder of his military career in the Ready Reserves, prepared to be re-activated at any time, until his retirement was official in 2014 when he turned 60.

Geno laughed and smiled while recounting stories from his military career, but wondered why his experience would be considered newsworthy.  His adventures, accomplishments, and perspective are unique; perhaps he might share more of them when you when you next bump into him in Kalona.