In three decades of Army service, Bob Ruch has served with four engineer battalions and a division, training Soldiers at the Army’s premiere training center, was staff officer for NATO, and commanded two U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Districts (Philadelphia and Omaha). Most recently he has commanded the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville.
He’s deployed to combat zones in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, attended the Army War College and Command and Staff College and the Sapper Leader Course.
Not a bad career for a man who never thought he’d ever wear an Army uniform. He retires today after 30 years of military service.
As a student at Shippensburg University studying geo-environmental science, Ruch recalls signing up for a Reserve Officer Training Corps’ military science course just to pad his GPA. The next semester he was taking another military science course and showing an interest in ROTC. As he asked the instructors about ROTC, they explained the benefits of ROTC and explained that if he were to continue, he would get a uniform. “I asked if we had to wear it,” Ruch said, adding that when they said “yes” he immediately dropped the course.
However, Ruch came from a large Catholic family—he has eight siblings— in the Philadelphia suburbs. His dad was in sales, his mom worked at a local business. Although his parents made sure all their children went to college, they expected the kids to help pay their way. Ruch knew an ROTC scholarship would certainly help.
“Once I realized ROTC would pay for school—and I was running out of money fast—I realized it was what I needed to do,” Ruch said.
Ruch went the ROTC route at Shippensburg, knowing he would owe the Army several years of service after graduation. He said he never thought he would give the Army more than four years, but when he went home to his parents for holidays, some of his older neighbors who had served in the military heard Ruch was in ROTC and they began to influence his mindset.
“These were old World War II and Korea vets and they recognized the opportunity the military provided and they would say, ‘It’s a good career Bob, do 20, you won’t regret it.’ I guess in a way those old guys influenced me to make a career out of it,” Ruch said.
Ruch was a distinguished military graduate from Shippensburg in 1986 and began his military career with the 7th Engineer Battalion, 5th Infantry Division (Mechanized), at Fort Polk, Louisiana, as a platoon leader and later as a company executive officer. His next assignment was as company commander with the 2nd Engineer Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division at Camp Castle, Republic of Korea.
After his assignment in Korea, Ruch took a special duty assignment as the live fire engineer trainer at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California. According to Ruch, teaching Soldiers doctrine-based live-fire combat maneuvers and operations might have been the most satisfying assignment in the Army.
“The Soldiers I helped train at NTC were the Soldiers who went on to push back Sadam Hussein in Gulf War I,” Ruch said. “Great to know I had a direct effect on their way of fighting a war. Doctrine-based training.”
As Ruch climbed the ranks, he began taking on more staff-level positions and soon got his first taste of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as an operations officer at the Pittsburgh District “learning about rivers and dams and the important role USACE plays in reducing disaster risks and energizing the nation’s economy,” he said. After his district assignment, Ruch was back to the regular Army serving as the S3 (operations) of the 1st Engineer Battalion, and then of the 937th Engineer Group, Fort Riley, Kansas.
After Kansas, Ruch’s next assignment was serving at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, Belgium, where he was the senior staff officer for NATO Infrastructure in Crisis Response Operations dealing with construction in Afghanistan and in the Balkans.
“Neat tour,” Ruch recalls. “As a crisis action officer I was seeing over jointly funded projects in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania. We scoped projects and pitched them to the NATO infrastructure committee, that’s where I learned a lot about consensus.”
After 9-11 and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Ruch began overseeing that part of the world working to improve NATO Headquarters in Kabul.
“We did a lot of good things like improve force protection at the compound and resourcing a neglected Kabul Airport,” Ruch said.
After NATO, Ruch came back to the states to take command of the Philadelphia District in 2004 where he oversaw operations managing the water resources of the Delaware River basin while providing construction oversight for Army and Air Force projects within the district’s geographical area of operations.
“It was a great assignment because of the scope of what we did there, but it was also a great assignment because I was home and close to family,” he said.
Ruch was at the helm of Philadelphia District for a short time before the Army required his combat services and he was off to Fort Hood, Texas, as the division engineer for the 1st Cavalry Division. As the division engineer, he deployed to Iraq and served as the deputy of the Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team under the State Department.
“It was a tough deployment but I was very proud of the work we did in Iraq in helping improve their infrastructure,” Ruch said.
After his assignment with the 1st Cavalry Division, Ruch was back in Pennsylvania—only this time to Carlisle Barracks as an Army War College student.
Ruch said he never was too studious. He was a B and C student through his primary school years, admittedly more focused on friends and following his beloved Eagles, Flyers, 76ers and Phillies.
“I wasn’t a good student, but I could have been better had I been more focused. But as I grew older I learned how to become a better student and my grades improved in high school and college and by the time I was in the Army, I had become a much better student,” Ruch said.
The ability to improve his academic skills led Ruch to a master’s degree in engineering management from St. Martin’s College and a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College.
After graduating from War College, Ruch took command at USACE’s Omaha District in Nebraska. It was in command at Omaha that Ruch made decisions that were some of the most significant accomplishments of his career as he led efforts to alleviate the damage of the 2011 Missouri River Flood.
Triggered by record snowfall in the Rocky Mountains of Montana and Wyoming along with near-record spring rainfall in central and eastern Montana, six major dams along the Missouri River released record amounts of water to prevent overflow which led to flooding threatening several towns and cities along the river from Montana to Missouri
“It was as challenging as any day in combat,” said Ruch. “We had (thousands of) people’s lives and livelihoods in our hands. My life became the flood. But all the (federal and state) agencies came together to accomplish the mission and we worked very hard to reduce the damage. Our work saved two state capitals and the city of Hamburg, Iowa. I was very proud of what we accomplished.”
From Omaha, Ruch moved on to command the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville.
Nearly four years have passed since Col. Robert Ruch assumed command of Huntsville Center, and in those years Ruch said he believes his legacy has been explaining Huntsville Center’s capabilities to other USACE districts and divisions. Huntsville Center executes more than 6,000 contract actions valued at more than $2 billion annually.
From briefing district commanders to teaching the pre-command course, Ruch spent a lot of time telling the Huntsville Center story and familiarizing people with the Center’s mission and how it has evolved.
“Technical expertise with project expertise built around it,” was his elevator pitch.
However, Ruch admits he wasn’t too familiar with the Huntsville Center mission when he first arrived. Several weeks passed after he assumed command here before he said the light bulb came on.
“I began turning 180 degrees and focusing on an ‘enterprise vision’ to see where the value lies in what the Center does,” he recalls.
Boyce Ross, director of Huntsville Center Engineering Directorate, said Ruch’s enthusiasm for the Center’s mission has improved how the Center works with others in the Corps of Engineers.
“He’s been a big enabler in the arena of helping us work with other districts and emphasizing the importance of doing so,” Ross said. “He helped us become recognized more as a force multiplier among other Corps districts. With his leadership, maturity and experience, we’re now having less difficulties working across geographical boundaries.”
Ruch said he believes in explaining the Huntsville Center to people and agencies without knowledge of the Center’s capabilities is important, but that it’s the Center’s returning customers that are the engine driving the Center.
“Usually Huntsville Center customers are coming to you because they can’t get what they need anywhere else,” Ruch said. “When they come to us as customers, they find out about our technical and program expertise and then they come back again and again.”
Ruch said there is a certain pride in knowing that during his command here he had a part in helping the sun-setting of the chemical weapons demilitarization program and the Iraq and Afghanistan munitions disposal projects.
He also said he takes tremendous pride in knowing he commanded an organization that improves U.S. military installations around the world.
“We make installations better and enhance the quality of life for the Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors and Marines and their families as well as civilian employees supporting the missions at installations. You can’t drive on an installation anywhere without seeing some project that Huntsville Center had a part of,” Ruch said.
And for Ruch, he knows the importance of quality of life issues for the military and their families. Ruch has been married for 20 years and has two daughters at home. He said he certainly knows what’s important in life.
“I don’t believe it’s hard to maintain balance,” Ruch said. “My dad always said ‘Work to live, don’t live to work.’ That’s not being lazy, that’s being balanced. I don’t believe you have to be first into the office and last to leave. Come into work, do your job in the time allotted and go home. Not to say there’s not sometimes you have to come in early or stay late, but I never believed that was necessary to succeed. I get up at 5:30 a.m. to go for my run and when I get back, I see my daughters off to school and that’s what’s really important to me.”
After retirement, Ruch said he’s planning on focusing on his family “and catching up on intellectual endeavors, like re-reading books from his favorite author Jeff Shaara and binge watching Sons of Anarchy and Vikings,” Ruch said with a grin.
He’ll also focus on his hunting and fishing passions, as well.
“I’m appreciating knowing I’ve got more time to establish those fishing holes and hunting sites,” Ruch said.
Not a bad life for a man who never thought he’d ever wear an Army uniform.