PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. - Sgt. Maj. D. Scott Frye, senior enlisted advisor for North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, is retiring March 30 after 32 years of service in the United States Marine Corps.
Frye has served as NORAD and USNORTHCOM SEA since January 2004. He said his career seems to have gone by all too quickly.
“It’s funny how 32 years goes by like the blink of an eye,” Frye said. “I feel the same. I’m quite sure I don’t look the same, but I really feel the same.”
Frye joined the Marines in 1975 with the intent of getting law enforcement experience before returning to his Connecticut home and applying to be a police officer. He said he wanted to become a drill instructor and, after almost getting out of the Corps, his career planner convinced him to stay and helped him secure orders to the drill field at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, Calif.
“I knew that it was going to be hard to turn back after that,” Frye said. “I was very successful and enjoyed all the time I spent on the drill field.”
Frye spent a total of eight years serving on the drill field, either as a drill instructor, a staff member at the drill instructor training school, a drill master or chief instructor of the Marine Corps drill instructor school. Later, Frye was assigned to several military jails, including one in Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines.
Frye served as first sergeant for Charlie Company, 1st Recruit Training Battalion until 1992, when he was reassigned as the first sergeant of Drill Instructor School in San Diego. His other first sergeant assignments were Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines and "Suicide Charley" Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines.
He served as the sergeant major of 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, from August 1994 to January 1997. He then was assigned as the sergeant major of the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., and sergeant major of Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Va. His last assignment before coming to NORAD and USNORTHCOM was sergeant major of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Atlantic, North and South.
Frye said that his experience at NORAD and USNORTHCOM was an excellent way to wrap up his career. “I’ve been around a long time,” he said. “But every day is different here; it’s so fresh, it’s so new, it’s so challenging, it’s so exciting and it’s so necessary.”
Frye said the contrast between the Marine Infantry and serving at the commands was vast. “(NORAD and USNORTHCOM) don’t go anywhere," he said. "We are here to work strategies to protect the bottom line.
“I can think of nothing I would rather do with my time than protect the homeland,” he added.
Frye said that the professional personnel at NORAD and USNORTHCOM are some of the best he has ever worked with, and that, as the protectors of the homeland, he hopes that everyone who serves at the commands is “solemnly committed when they say … ‘on my watch, I am going to do my damnedest to make sure that we don’t get whacked again, that the terrorists don’t outthink us.’"
Frye said that, upon his retirement, he would “pass this torch on to more capable hands and wish them equal success.”