SPIRIT OF AMERICA: Scott Gration

Two cultures collide at the home of Winter Garden resident and veteran Scott Gration. African wood carvings and artwork catch the eye in the living room and bedrooms, while an American flag flaps in the wind atop a flagpole in the front yard. 

A home office is filled with countless trinkets of U.S. military service and photos of Gration beside every president from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama — while the retired U.S. Air Force veteran also converses with his wife, Judy, in Swahili.

It’s a blend of two nations that Gration has called home — and it gives him a different perspective when he thinks about the freedoms Americans enjoy, he said.

Growing up in Africa, Gration saw what life was like in a country without freedom of speech or freedom of the press — a place where expressing a viewpoint could land you in jail or get you killed, he said. 

“Nobody can take away your freedom in America, but I’m afraid that sometimes we take these things for granted,” he said.

Gration was born in St. Charles, Illinois, but his parents moved the family in 1953 to Congo, Africa, to do missionary work. Gration learned Swahili as his first language and came to know Africa as home. However, his family was forced to evacuate from Congo multiple times because of increasing violence. In 1964, the family evacuated from Congo for the last time and crossed the border into Uganda; Gration’s parents chose to teach in Kenya from 1964 to 1967.

“We got out with just the clothes on our back,” Gration said. “But it showed me a couple things. Nobody can take what’s in your head — so education becomes important. And nobody can take what’s in your heart. … Nobody can take your belief about your country. Nobody can take your integrity.

“That’s why it’s so important to me to instill in my family the freedom, the feeling of patriotism, of Americanism and a respect for this country. I pray that they’ll never take it for granted.”

Gration came back to the United States as a senior in high school in the late 1960s. With a low draft number during the Vietnam War, Gration joined the U.S. Air Force and went into active duty in 1974, getting his flight training before becoming a flight instructor.

Gration grew a strong appreciation and respect for American freedoms and was glad to serve his country — despite some early opposition.

“It was sort of a rocky start, because of the anti-Vietnam protests on college campuses,” Gration said. “You sort of had to want to do it, because the environment wasn’t real pro-military at that time.”

Gration joined the military for four years to fulfill his commitment, but the people he met and the opportunity to fly fighters kept him in the service — he couldn’t walk away from protecting America’s freedoms.

“I ended up falling in love with it,” Gration said. “Growing up in Africa, I had always seen America as a far-off place where you had freedom, where you had liberty and values. I had been a refugee — I had everything taken from our family. I lived through that and had seen where the rule of law didn’t exist.

“The flag always meant something special to me — it wasn’t just a piece of cloth with red, white and blue colors and shapes — it really stood for something,” he said.

Gration enjoyed a 32-year career with the U.S. Air Force, working his way up to major general. From 1991 to 1998, Gration was a part of 274 combat missions flying over Iraq.

“When you go into combat with four other fighter pilots, you know that they’ll give their lives to save you the same way you’d do the same for them,” Gration said. “The camaraderie of a squadron, of a flight, was so strong. I really became attached to what I was doing — in more than it’s a job, it was a way of life.”

Gration turned his focus to politics and diplomacy after his career in the military. He served as a member of the presidential transition team under Obama, U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan and the U.S. Ambassador to Kenya.

After spending his life serving his country as both a pilot and a diplomat, Gration’s work isn’t finished. He hopes to support local veterans through an initiative in its early planning stages — encouraging veteran-friendly communities through discounts at local businesses, funding for counseling and other ways of honoring those who have served in the military. He’s already met with the city of Winter Garden about the idea.

“We lose 22 veterans a day in suicides — (more than) 6,000 veterans take their own lives a year,” Gration said. “A lot of it is because they’ve been part of this inclusive unit that I just talked about — this sense of camaraderie — and now they go out and they feel isolated. They don’t feel connected and sometimes don’t feel respected, and they sometimes suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“What we’re trying to do in Winter Garden is get all the community behind us and get all the businesses behind us to recognize our veterans, to employ them (and) to help them feel recognized,” he said.

Gration said he is proud to have served his country and to be a part of something far greater than himself. He has come close to death multiple times in his work serving the country — from the numerous combat missions in the Middle East to surviving the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.

Every bit of his service to his country was worth it, he said.

“To be part of the legacy, to be part of the history and to be a continuation of what brave young men and women gave to our country — right back from the beginning — to be part of that lineage, I took great pride in the history,” Gration said.

That legacy of service runs in the family. Gration’s grandfather fought in World War I, while his father served in the Navy during World War II. Beyond his own service, Gration has watched his son, son-in-law and daughter-in-law embark on military careers in the Air Force, Army and National Guard.

An unbreakable chain of service and sacrifice persists throughout history — and the Gration family is right in the midst of it.

“It’s just nice to know that the generation continues,” Gration said. 

“It’s been an honor to pass this wonderful thing — the preservation of freedom, because freedom’s not free — to the next generation, and I’m confident that they’re going to pick up the banner and take off just the same way that I did,” Gration said. “It’s really an honor to be part of this chain that has been unbroken since the founding of our country.”