Why I Joined: Hurricane leads senior enlisted leader of 82nd Airborne to join military
On the same day in August 1992, a young Randolph Delapena had the worst interaction of his life with a soldier and the best encounter with a paratrooper.
Command Sgt. Maj. Delapena. who assumed the senior enlisted advisor spot for the 82nd Airborne Division in February, was 13 years old and Hurricane Andrew had just ravished his Miami, Florida, neighborhood.
His uncle’s house was destroyed, Delapena said.
“The roof is missing,” he said. “Other people’s property was sitting in the yard.”
Delapena’s mother sent him to help his elderly aunt and uncle with the cleanup.
Within three days after the devastation, Delapena said, food and water had run out.
While waiting for relief, Delapena noticed soldiers in the area.
“It wasn’t a good interaction,” he said.
Delapena ran to a fence line, explained his family’s situation and asked the soldiers if they had any food or water.
“Their reaction back to a 13-year-old was, ‘Well that’s not my (expletive) problem,” he said. “That’s what a soldier said to a 13-year-old. It’s imprinted in my head to this day.”
Delapena didn’t recognize uniform patches at the time but now believes the soldiers were part of the Florida National Guard.
‘How are you doing buddy?’
Delapena thought to himself that he never wanted to interact with another soldier again in his life, but a couple of hours later more soldiers came down the street.
He tried not to make eye contact based on his conversation with the other soldiers.
“I actually looked up because the beret caught my attention and I looked, and the individual that made contact with me leading that formation said, ‘How are you doing buddy?’” Delapena recalled.
When the paratrooper in a maroon beret walked up to the fence, Delapena again mentioned his family’s needs.
The paratrooper, Delapena said, immediately unsnapped his canteen and offered him water.
“That’s the first time I ever tasted water from a canteen,” he said. “It still tastes horrible to this day, but I was so thirsty I drank all this man’s water.”
After Delapena returned the empty canteen, the paratrooper played catch with him until other paratroopers returned with a Humvee full of jerky and water.
While grateful, Delapena was concerned about looters and if the items would make his family a target.
The paratrooper, he said, rushed the items inside.
“My uncle and aunt are all Cuban-like. They speak no English. They’re just hugging them and crying because they see the food,” Delapena said. “We distributed it amongst all our neighbors.”
Delapena said the paratrooper went outside and played ball with him again and told him he noticed Delapena was afraid of looters.
The paratrooper pointed to a tent and asked him if he saw the other paratroopers.
It was the first time Delapena ever heard the word “paratrooper,” he said.
“He said, ‘That’s the 82nd Airborne Division, and if you hear those looters at any time and if you feel they’re in the area, just run to that tent,’” Delapena said.
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Joining the Army and the 82nd
To this day, Delapena said, he doesn’t know the rank or name of the paratrooper, but as a teen, he made the decision to join the Army to be part of the division.
“It took me two duty stations, but I eventually got here and I stayed, and now I get the honor to lead as the division sergeant major, which means the world,” he said.
Delapena enlisted in the Army in 1996 as a combat engineer and was selected as Fort Sill’s Drill Sergeant of the Year in 2005. In 2007, he received the U.S. Army Forces Command’s top engineer noncommissioned officer award.
Twenty of his 26-year-long Army career has been spent with the 82nd Airborne Division, Delapena said.
His past assignments with the division include as battalion command sergeant major for the 127th Airborne Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, and he was the senior enlisted leader for the 2nd Brigade Combat Team.
Delapena said his interaction with the paratroopers in 1992 is part of the division's legacy.
Paratroopers, Delapena said, are disciplined in how they treat others.
“You can look at our history and it’s beyond just Miami,” he said. “There’s the combat side, but really it’s the humanitarian side and everything else between Katrina and thousands of others that paratroopers and their purpose and what they are gives peace to people.”
Editor's note: "Why I Joined" is an ongoing feature of The Fayetteville Observer. If you'd like to share your story on why you joined the military, contact military writer Rachael Riley at rriley@fayobserver.com.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Why I Joined: Command Sgt. Maj. Randolph Delapena with 82nd Airborne
