Lt. General Michael Ferriter
U.S. Army (Ret.)
Commanding General Fort Benning
1979-2014
National Veterans Memorial and Museum – CEO
U.S. Army (Ret.)
Commanding General Fort Benning
1979-2014
National Veterans Memorial and Museum – CEO
Michael Ferriter was born into an Army family in 1956 at Fort Belvoir, an Army base, in Virginia. His Dad grew up in a blue-collar family during the depression and joined the Army. He served in 25th Infantry Division during WWII and fought at Guadalcanal and all through the islands of the Pacific where he was put in for a Medal of Honor, but it was downgraded to the Silver Star for Valor. He additionally earned the Distinguished Service Cross and a couple of purple hearts. Michael described his mother as a very elegant woman from Boston.
In 1967 Mike’s dad received orders to Berlin, Germany. The family followed him and was based in Berlin during the Cold War. That experience helped Mike understand there were good guys and bad guys in the world. Mike immersed himself in sports and travelled throughout Europe playing on the all-star baseball team. His mom enrolled him in the John F. Kennedy School where half of the classes were taught in German. He also was exposed to black-tie dinners parties with representatives from various US agencies. Not your typical childhood.
In 1970 Mike’s father retired from the Army as a Colonel. The family, including his two sisters and two brothers headed to Lake Tahoe where his father had taken a job as the chief operations officer for a new ski resort. Mike found a job working under his father’s supervision as a chair lift operator. His father gave specific instructions to never leave the operators shed. One day a few young girls caught Mike’s attention and he left his post. His dad found out and Mike was fired. Discipline and accountability were key principles drilled into his head.
Just before Mike entered his senior year of high school in 1974, the family moved to Monterey, California. During his senior year Mike played on the basketball team as a point guard and the baseball team as a second baseman. Mike applied for and received an ROTC scholarship. He had his eyes on the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, but he wasn’t selected. His father suggested he consider the Citadel. Mike was thinking about the University of Santa Barbara, but his father pushed the Citadel. After a brief family negotiation, Mike applied and was accepted at the Citadel. He arrived on campus for his freshman year and fell in love with the school. He studied a business curriculum along with management and leadership courses.
“As great things work out, I came home at the end of my freshman year and my mom said ‘we met a family with five daughters and two of them go to the University of South Carolina.’” His mother suggested Mike go introduce himself to their mother, Mrs. Hemphill, and see about carpooling. Mike and one of the Hemphill daughters, Margaret, hit it off and soon the pair were spending weekends together in either Columbia or Charleston, South Carolina. After college the couple was married, and they are still together 47 years later. They have four children and three have served in the military.
In 1979 Mike graduated from the Citadel, was commissioned and went to the 14-week Officer’s Basic Course at Fort Benning. Mike primary goal was to attend Ranger School. At that time there were too many candidates for Ranger School and Mike was not selected, so that personal goal was put on hold. Not being selected really bothered Mike and also motivated him. He was determined to get to Ranger School to prove his mettle. He spent the next three years at Fort Riley in Kansas as a platoon leader and Battalion Logistics Officer with a mechanized infantry division. “It was an interesting time in the Army. We were a couple of years out of Vietnam…and we ran into, ‘back in ‘Nam we did it this way. If I can do my job who cares if I smoke dope’”. These soldiers didn’t want to do PT and Mike had a Captain who didn’t like PT. The Captain didn’t want Mike to run PT with his men, but he was determine to lead by example. The platoon would start their run in one direction and Mike would run in the other and then link up with his men on the next block. He did this for two years “because I think leadership is who you are and how you impact lives.”
Mike’s chain of command included one particular Captain who was a source of problems. He was involved with stealing Army goods and selling them for his own account. He told Mike to take a truck to a certain location and trade it for another truck full of “stuff”. Mike knew what was going on and refused. This was a very difficult situation for a young soldier. Refusing to comply with this order could result in poor performance reviews and be career limiting.
“I decided I will never lie, cheat or steal. I entered the Army with my faith, my family, my friends and my integrity.” Mike decided he was going to leave the Army with his faith, family, friends and integrity and if he was put in a position where those would be compromised, he would take his services elsewhere.
During his time at Fort Riley Mike advanced to the rank of Captain but he never lost sight of Ranger School. While his peers were relaxing and playing golf, Mike was putting in the time to prepare for Ranger School including ruck marching in the 90 degree heat with his faithful dog. His dogged determination paid off and he entered Ranger School on October 18th, his eldest son Dan’s first birthday.
I asked what the 58 days in Ranger School were like? “It was very, very physical and mental. I had been a platoon leader, a support platoon leader, a truck platoon leader and warrant officer. I knew what it took to run every day.” He knew no matter how bad it seemed, eventually there would be some food, some rest and an opportunity to get dry and warm. When he arrived at Ranger School Mike had already experienced long training exercises that helped him get through each day. Ranger school created an environment of “sleep deprivation and cutting calories down to about one third normal so that you feel the pressure of combat.” Mike had already experienced that. At one point Mike was carrying too much food and began giving it away to his squad mates.
The men were taught all the functions of a Ranger squad such as moving together as a team, how to react to contact, navigating at night, how to clear a room, and more. Then they would go into the field and be tested on what they learned. There was a mountain phase, a desert phase and a swamp phase. Mike kept a journal for the 58 days of Ranger School. He would write the name of someone he knew that was counting on him or believed in him. That helped him when he had a bad day, and everyone had bad days. 200 soldiers and 6 captains started Ranger school and only 2 captains and 30% of the entire class graduated. At graduation Mike received his Ranger Tab.
In 1985 Mike received orders to Fairbanks, Alaska. His goal was to be the commander of a parachute company. Instead, he was assigned a position on the Battalion Staff. Undeterred, he put his head down and worked hard. Ultimately, he was rewarded by being named Charlie Airborne Commander. “Really tough guys. You carry a 60 plus pound ruck sack full of survival gear, you walk on snowshoes and parachute into anywhere. In August young men with skinny necks and skinny legs arrive and the next April or May, they were men.”
Mike loved being the Charlie Airborne commander and they placed first in brigade-wide testing. However, it was time to change command and he was offered a position as a recruiter in San Jose, CA. That wasn’t what Mike had in mind and he called the 2nd Ranger Battalion but there were no openings for captains. His disappointment had not fully sunk in when he received a call the next day that someone had quit, and he could come and interview for the spot. He immediately jumped on a plane and flew to Fort Lewis, Washington from Fairbanks and was selected.
Mike packed his bags and arrived at 2nd Ranger Battalion along with three others. He was hoping for Bravo Company command because it was known as a leadership factory. Two of the men arriving with him had served with the Rangers previously and that pedigree gave them a leg up in selection for a command. Mike was again the new guy trying to break into an established group of people that knew each other. Once again, he would impress the Army with his perseverance and work ethic. That led to receiving orders to command Bravo Company in May of 1988.
“It was an amazing leadership factory.” Bravo Company conducted extensive live fire training and parachute jumping. This was just prior to the Panama Invasion, Operation Just Cause. Bravo Company was doing it’s work-up for a Panama mission including multiple rehearsals to take down a Panamanian airfield. During this training the time came for a change in command and Mike received orders to the 9th Infantry. Mike’s tenure ended just before the invasion of Panama and on December 19th of 1989 the men that Mike had trained, jumped into Panama and executed their mission with perfection. This was bittersweet for Mike. He gave his men the training they needed to execute their mission, but Mike would have liked to been part of the Ranger team that jumped into Panama. Mike talked about having to control your ego and maintain your humility. He greeted his Rangers when they returned and they told him, “Sir it was just like all of the live fires we did together. We wish you were there.” Mike knew he did what he was called upon to do. Prepare his men for combat.
It's worth noting that Army Rangers are among the best trained and most elite soldiers in the armed forces. The typical Ranger does not spend a career in a Ranger Battalion. Being a Ranger is a very grueling and spartan existence. Rangers will move into the general Army bringing their skills and knowledge to the new units they serve with.
In 1990 Mike received orders to Command General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This was a sign of great opportunities ahead. The tradeoff was he missed Operation Desert Storm. Another dose of humility, but when one door closes, another opens. Mike had his eye on the 101st Airborne for his next assignment but was told all of those slots had been filled. A regimental command officer who Mike had met while his father was in the Army was visiting Fort Levenworth. Mike decided to introduce himself again. He said he had heard Mike had a slot as a regimental Major with the 101st Airborne. Mike said, “I heard all of the spots were filled.” The reply was, “well, I’ve got one for you.” A track record of hard work and taking the extra step paid off.
In 1991 Mike returned to the Rangers as the Operations Officer with the 3rd Ranger Battalion. While training in August of ’93 they received word that fighting had broken out in the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. Bravo Company was deployed to help in Somalia and Mike stayed behind to continue the training of Alpha Company. On October 3rd of ’93 the fighting intensified and culminated in ‘Blackhawk Down’. Alpha Company was deployed and arrived in Mogadishu after the events of Blackhawk down had concluded. Mike and his men stayed for a month and a half and then headed back to the States. The mission to Somalia did show that rugged, tough training pays off. “Any other unit in the Army might have been killed to the man” that day.
In ’94 Mike received orders to command the 504th Parachute Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division. After two years with the 504th Mike’s resume showed a successful Company command and a successful Battalion command. That made him eligible to be considered for a Ranger Battalion Command. Mike was selected and spent the next two years commanding the 3rd Ranger Battalion. It was during this time that Mike was introduced to Ju-Jitsu.
Colonel Stanley McCrystal (later General McCrystal) asked Mike to meet with the Gracie brothers, who were winning Ultimate Fighting Championships. McCrystal was thinking of introducing hand-to-hand combat into the Army training. Mike suggested that spending the money on rifle scopes instead of Ju-Jitsu training would be a better use of the money. Colonel McCrystal thought otherwise. When Mike met with the Gracie Brothers they told him that their success resulted from taking the Japanese form of Ju-Jitsu and adding the Brazilian concepts to form Brazilian Ju-Jitsu. At this time, the Army Leadership was also concerned that the Lieutenant level officers were too soft. They were better with PowerPoints than with their rifles. To improve their fighting capability Mike decided to introduce U.S. Army Combatives training. Combatives includes hand -to-hand combat, marksmanship and close quarters marksmanship.
Initially the younger officers embraced this training, but the older offices resisted, possibly for fear of being embarrassed in hand-to-hand combat by a younger soldier. Mike had to knock down hurdle after hurdle to implement his combatives program on an Army-wide basis. The last hurdle to clear was the complaint that there was no facility to teach a combatives course. Mike traded some out of date and long forgotten MRE’s (meals ready to eat) for a book warehouse. Mike was following his mantra of reject rejection.
I asked how often someone in a role directly facing the enemy resorts to hand-to-hand combat. “Pretty frequently. It can be as benign as you’re at a checkpoint and a vehicle comes up and its better to know how to get someone out of a vehicle smoothly than to have a giant confusing situation, or even worse.” “There are thousands of stories about entering a building in Iraq or Afghanistan, someone jumps you with a knife from behind….to get control of the situation, you take this person to the ground and hopefully, in front of his family, flex-cuff him and control the situation. You can enter a building in combat with 18 people all in their house (residents and not bad guys) and you need to control the unarmed. You can be within 5 feet of someone and your weapon jams.”
Mike’s next assignment was to be a National Defense Fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. After completing this one-year assignment Mike, who was now a Colonel, received orders to the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, VA. He was on the job for a month when 9/11 occurred. Among the many things he was involved with over the next 3 years was forming the Department of Homeland Defense.
Mike was promoted to Lt. General and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. He went on to served three deployments in Iraq between 2005 and 2011. It was during these deployments he learned that the troops and the leaders had to be agile, innovated, creative, fit and tough to be effective war fighters. He also saw that America was lucky to have the quality of it’s men and women who volunteered to go to war. “They are get it done kind of men and women.” Mike observed during the cold war, as long as America was in Berlin, the Soviets didn’t have it. Similarly, he observed, as long as America is in the middle east the Persians don’t have it. That was said in 2019 and now, taken in the context of December 2023, that looks like a prescient observation.
Mike returned from Iraq and was looking for his next command. He was told his next assignment would be to command the U.S. Army Installation Management Command. He would be responsible for all Army bases worldwide. While this was a big job with a great deal of responsibility, Mike was hoping for something closer to the men and the action. While disappointed Mike said, “if you want me to take care of Army families, I’m your man.” Over the next two years Mike overhauled an otherwise tired function. He oversaw 120,000 employees, 75 bases spread across 17 time zones and a $12 billion budget, which he reduce by $2.9MM over two years.
As this command drew to a close and with strong results to show for his efforts Mike was looking for his next command. “I was raised to seek the next challenge.” But what Mike heard was “we don’t have anything else for you.” Just like that, the curtain came down on an illustrious 35-year career of serving his country.
Mike was raised to always look for the next challenge, so he decided to “go get busy somewhere else.” He founded the Ferriter Group, a consulting firm, that develops leaders, builds teams and transforms corporations using fundamentals of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to teach how to overcome any obstacle. Mike loves Ju-Jitsu and through his hard work and dedication he has risen to the level of black belt.
Soon other opportunities were being presented to Mike. He interviewed to run the Veterans Administration (VA) and was a finalist for the position but politics got in the way and he was not selected. He interviewed to be the President of the Wounded Warrior Project but lost out to his good friend. He received a call to interview to be the president of the Citadel but lost out to another good friend. With three consecutive disappointments, Mike wondered if there would ever be a right fit. With the support of his wife, he remained confident and patient.
In 2018 he was asked to interview to be the founding president of the National Veterans Memorial and Museum in Columbus, Ohio. This time the fit was perfect, and Mike accepted the job. The museum is dedicated to telling the stories of veterans from all conflicts and branches of the armed forces. It focuses on telling the story of why they decided to join the military, their time in service and their lives after service. The museum offers many programs for veterans to help them connect with other veterans and manage their PTS.
Mike talked about his six principles of leadership that apply not only to the military, but to every other aspect of life.
Mike said two things that offer great life advice to anyone:
“There’s a lot of times you don’t get what you think is supposed to happen in life. ‘I should have been’ is not a good way to go through life. Look through the windshield not the rear-view mirror.”
“Can you stand strong when others won’t? Can you stay strong when it’s personally and professionally not in your best interest and do the right thing? We need a lot more of that. We need to celebrate it when we see it.”
Thank you, Mike, for your years of service and sacrifice, your four combat tours, having over 200 parachute jumps, training young men and women, leading by example and showing how to be good at rejecting rejection.
In 1967 Mike’s dad received orders to Berlin, Germany. The family followed him and was based in Berlin during the Cold War. That experience helped Mike understand there were good guys and bad guys in the world. Mike immersed himself in sports and travelled throughout Europe playing on the all-star baseball team. His mom enrolled him in the John F. Kennedy School where half of the classes were taught in German. He also was exposed to black-tie dinners parties with representatives from various US agencies. Not your typical childhood.
In 1970 Mike’s father retired from the Army as a Colonel. The family, including his two sisters and two brothers headed to Lake Tahoe where his father had taken a job as the chief operations officer for a new ski resort. Mike found a job working under his father’s supervision as a chair lift operator. His father gave specific instructions to never leave the operators shed. One day a few young girls caught Mike’s attention and he left his post. His dad found out and Mike was fired. Discipline and accountability were key principles drilled into his head.
Just before Mike entered his senior year of high school in 1974, the family moved to Monterey, California. During his senior year Mike played on the basketball team as a point guard and the baseball team as a second baseman. Mike applied for and received an ROTC scholarship. He had his eyes on the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, but he wasn’t selected. His father suggested he consider the Citadel. Mike was thinking about the University of Santa Barbara, but his father pushed the Citadel. After a brief family negotiation, Mike applied and was accepted at the Citadel. He arrived on campus for his freshman year and fell in love with the school. He studied a business curriculum along with management and leadership courses.
“As great things work out, I came home at the end of my freshman year and my mom said ‘we met a family with five daughters and two of them go to the University of South Carolina.’” His mother suggested Mike go introduce himself to their mother, Mrs. Hemphill, and see about carpooling. Mike and one of the Hemphill daughters, Margaret, hit it off and soon the pair were spending weekends together in either Columbia or Charleston, South Carolina. After college the couple was married, and they are still together 47 years later. They have four children and three have served in the military.
In 1979 Mike graduated from the Citadel, was commissioned and went to the 14-week Officer’s Basic Course at Fort Benning. Mike primary goal was to attend Ranger School. At that time there were too many candidates for Ranger School and Mike was not selected, so that personal goal was put on hold. Not being selected really bothered Mike and also motivated him. He was determined to get to Ranger School to prove his mettle. He spent the next three years at Fort Riley in Kansas as a platoon leader and Battalion Logistics Officer with a mechanized infantry division. “It was an interesting time in the Army. We were a couple of years out of Vietnam…and we ran into, ‘back in ‘Nam we did it this way. If I can do my job who cares if I smoke dope’”. These soldiers didn’t want to do PT and Mike had a Captain who didn’t like PT. The Captain didn’t want Mike to run PT with his men, but he was determine to lead by example. The platoon would start their run in one direction and Mike would run in the other and then link up with his men on the next block. He did this for two years “because I think leadership is who you are and how you impact lives.”
Mike’s chain of command included one particular Captain who was a source of problems. He was involved with stealing Army goods and selling them for his own account. He told Mike to take a truck to a certain location and trade it for another truck full of “stuff”. Mike knew what was going on and refused. This was a very difficult situation for a young soldier. Refusing to comply with this order could result in poor performance reviews and be career limiting.
“I decided I will never lie, cheat or steal. I entered the Army with my faith, my family, my friends and my integrity.” Mike decided he was going to leave the Army with his faith, family, friends and integrity and if he was put in a position where those would be compromised, he would take his services elsewhere.
During his time at Fort Riley Mike advanced to the rank of Captain but he never lost sight of Ranger School. While his peers were relaxing and playing golf, Mike was putting in the time to prepare for Ranger School including ruck marching in the 90 degree heat with his faithful dog. His dogged determination paid off and he entered Ranger School on October 18th, his eldest son Dan’s first birthday.
I asked what the 58 days in Ranger School were like? “It was very, very physical and mental. I had been a platoon leader, a support platoon leader, a truck platoon leader and warrant officer. I knew what it took to run every day.” He knew no matter how bad it seemed, eventually there would be some food, some rest and an opportunity to get dry and warm. When he arrived at Ranger School Mike had already experienced long training exercises that helped him get through each day. Ranger school created an environment of “sleep deprivation and cutting calories down to about one third normal so that you feel the pressure of combat.” Mike had already experienced that. At one point Mike was carrying too much food and began giving it away to his squad mates.
The men were taught all the functions of a Ranger squad such as moving together as a team, how to react to contact, navigating at night, how to clear a room, and more. Then they would go into the field and be tested on what they learned. There was a mountain phase, a desert phase and a swamp phase. Mike kept a journal for the 58 days of Ranger School. He would write the name of someone he knew that was counting on him or believed in him. That helped him when he had a bad day, and everyone had bad days. 200 soldiers and 6 captains started Ranger school and only 2 captains and 30% of the entire class graduated. At graduation Mike received his Ranger Tab.
In 1985 Mike received orders to Fairbanks, Alaska. His goal was to be the commander of a parachute company. Instead, he was assigned a position on the Battalion Staff. Undeterred, he put his head down and worked hard. Ultimately, he was rewarded by being named Charlie Airborne Commander. “Really tough guys. You carry a 60 plus pound ruck sack full of survival gear, you walk on snowshoes and parachute into anywhere. In August young men with skinny necks and skinny legs arrive and the next April or May, they were men.”
Mike loved being the Charlie Airborne commander and they placed first in brigade-wide testing. However, it was time to change command and he was offered a position as a recruiter in San Jose, CA. That wasn’t what Mike had in mind and he called the 2nd Ranger Battalion but there were no openings for captains. His disappointment had not fully sunk in when he received a call the next day that someone had quit, and he could come and interview for the spot. He immediately jumped on a plane and flew to Fort Lewis, Washington from Fairbanks and was selected.
Mike packed his bags and arrived at 2nd Ranger Battalion along with three others. He was hoping for Bravo Company command because it was known as a leadership factory. Two of the men arriving with him had served with the Rangers previously and that pedigree gave them a leg up in selection for a command. Mike was again the new guy trying to break into an established group of people that knew each other. Once again, he would impress the Army with his perseverance and work ethic. That led to receiving orders to command Bravo Company in May of 1988.
“It was an amazing leadership factory.” Bravo Company conducted extensive live fire training and parachute jumping. This was just prior to the Panama Invasion, Operation Just Cause. Bravo Company was doing it’s work-up for a Panama mission including multiple rehearsals to take down a Panamanian airfield. During this training the time came for a change in command and Mike received orders to the 9th Infantry. Mike’s tenure ended just before the invasion of Panama and on December 19th of 1989 the men that Mike had trained, jumped into Panama and executed their mission with perfection. This was bittersweet for Mike. He gave his men the training they needed to execute their mission, but Mike would have liked to been part of the Ranger team that jumped into Panama. Mike talked about having to control your ego and maintain your humility. He greeted his Rangers when they returned and they told him, “Sir it was just like all of the live fires we did together. We wish you were there.” Mike knew he did what he was called upon to do. Prepare his men for combat.
It's worth noting that Army Rangers are among the best trained and most elite soldiers in the armed forces. The typical Ranger does not spend a career in a Ranger Battalion. Being a Ranger is a very grueling and spartan existence. Rangers will move into the general Army bringing their skills and knowledge to the new units they serve with.
In 1990 Mike received orders to Command General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This was a sign of great opportunities ahead. The tradeoff was he missed Operation Desert Storm. Another dose of humility, but when one door closes, another opens. Mike had his eye on the 101st Airborne for his next assignment but was told all of those slots had been filled. A regimental command officer who Mike had met while his father was in the Army was visiting Fort Levenworth. Mike decided to introduce himself again. He said he had heard Mike had a slot as a regimental Major with the 101st Airborne. Mike said, “I heard all of the spots were filled.” The reply was, “well, I’ve got one for you.” A track record of hard work and taking the extra step paid off.
In 1991 Mike returned to the Rangers as the Operations Officer with the 3rd Ranger Battalion. While training in August of ’93 they received word that fighting had broken out in the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. Bravo Company was deployed to help in Somalia and Mike stayed behind to continue the training of Alpha Company. On October 3rd of ’93 the fighting intensified and culminated in ‘Blackhawk Down’. Alpha Company was deployed and arrived in Mogadishu after the events of Blackhawk down had concluded. Mike and his men stayed for a month and a half and then headed back to the States. The mission to Somalia did show that rugged, tough training pays off. “Any other unit in the Army might have been killed to the man” that day.
In ’94 Mike received orders to command the 504th Parachute Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division. After two years with the 504th Mike’s resume showed a successful Company command and a successful Battalion command. That made him eligible to be considered for a Ranger Battalion Command. Mike was selected and spent the next two years commanding the 3rd Ranger Battalion. It was during this time that Mike was introduced to Ju-Jitsu.
Colonel Stanley McCrystal (later General McCrystal) asked Mike to meet with the Gracie brothers, who were winning Ultimate Fighting Championships. McCrystal was thinking of introducing hand-to-hand combat into the Army training. Mike suggested that spending the money on rifle scopes instead of Ju-Jitsu training would be a better use of the money. Colonel McCrystal thought otherwise. When Mike met with the Gracie Brothers they told him that their success resulted from taking the Japanese form of Ju-Jitsu and adding the Brazilian concepts to form Brazilian Ju-Jitsu. At this time, the Army Leadership was also concerned that the Lieutenant level officers were too soft. They were better with PowerPoints than with their rifles. To improve their fighting capability Mike decided to introduce U.S. Army Combatives training. Combatives includes hand -to-hand combat, marksmanship and close quarters marksmanship.
Initially the younger officers embraced this training, but the older offices resisted, possibly for fear of being embarrassed in hand-to-hand combat by a younger soldier. Mike had to knock down hurdle after hurdle to implement his combatives program on an Army-wide basis. The last hurdle to clear was the complaint that there was no facility to teach a combatives course. Mike traded some out of date and long forgotten MRE’s (meals ready to eat) for a book warehouse. Mike was following his mantra of reject rejection.
I asked how often someone in a role directly facing the enemy resorts to hand-to-hand combat. “Pretty frequently. It can be as benign as you’re at a checkpoint and a vehicle comes up and its better to know how to get someone out of a vehicle smoothly than to have a giant confusing situation, or even worse.” “There are thousands of stories about entering a building in Iraq or Afghanistan, someone jumps you with a knife from behind….to get control of the situation, you take this person to the ground and hopefully, in front of his family, flex-cuff him and control the situation. You can enter a building in combat with 18 people all in their house (residents and not bad guys) and you need to control the unarmed. You can be within 5 feet of someone and your weapon jams.”
Mike’s next assignment was to be a National Defense Fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. After completing this one-year assignment Mike, who was now a Colonel, received orders to the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, VA. He was on the job for a month when 9/11 occurred. Among the many things he was involved with over the next 3 years was forming the Department of Homeland Defense.
Mike was promoted to Lt. General and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. He went on to served three deployments in Iraq between 2005 and 2011. It was during these deployments he learned that the troops and the leaders had to be agile, innovated, creative, fit and tough to be effective war fighters. He also saw that America was lucky to have the quality of it’s men and women who volunteered to go to war. “They are get it done kind of men and women.” Mike observed during the cold war, as long as America was in Berlin, the Soviets didn’t have it. Similarly, he observed, as long as America is in the middle east the Persians don’t have it. That was said in 2019 and now, taken in the context of December 2023, that looks like a prescient observation.
Mike returned from Iraq and was looking for his next command. He was told his next assignment would be to command the U.S. Army Installation Management Command. He would be responsible for all Army bases worldwide. While this was a big job with a great deal of responsibility, Mike was hoping for something closer to the men and the action. While disappointed Mike said, “if you want me to take care of Army families, I’m your man.” Over the next two years Mike overhauled an otherwise tired function. He oversaw 120,000 employees, 75 bases spread across 17 time zones and a $12 billion budget, which he reduce by $2.9MM over two years.
As this command drew to a close and with strong results to show for his efforts Mike was looking for his next command. “I was raised to seek the next challenge.” But what Mike heard was “we don’t have anything else for you.” Just like that, the curtain came down on an illustrious 35-year career of serving his country.
Mike was raised to always look for the next challenge, so he decided to “go get busy somewhere else.” He founded the Ferriter Group, a consulting firm, that develops leaders, builds teams and transforms corporations using fundamentals of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to teach how to overcome any obstacle. Mike loves Ju-Jitsu and through his hard work and dedication he has risen to the level of black belt.
Soon other opportunities were being presented to Mike. He interviewed to run the Veterans Administration (VA) and was a finalist for the position but politics got in the way and he was not selected. He interviewed to be the President of the Wounded Warrior Project but lost out to his good friend. He received a call to interview to be the president of the Citadel but lost out to another good friend. With three consecutive disappointments, Mike wondered if there would ever be a right fit. With the support of his wife, he remained confident and patient.
In 2018 he was asked to interview to be the founding president of the National Veterans Memorial and Museum in Columbus, Ohio. This time the fit was perfect, and Mike accepted the job. The museum is dedicated to telling the stories of veterans from all conflicts and branches of the armed forces. It focuses on telling the story of why they decided to join the military, their time in service and their lives after service. The museum offers many programs for veterans to help them connect with other veterans and manage their PTS.
Mike talked about his six principles of leadership that apply not only to the military, but to every other aspect of life.
- Do your best.
- Do what is right.
- Improve daily.
- Build teams.
- Take Care of the little guy. Show you care.
- Don’t quit.
Mike said two things that offer great life advice to anyone:
“There’s a lot of times you don’t get what you think is supposed to happen in life. ‘I should have been’ is not a good way to go through life. Look through the windshield not the rear-view mirror.”
“Can you stand strong when others won’t? Can you stay strong when it’s personally and professionally not in your best interest and do the right thing? We need a lot more of that. We need to celebrate it when we see it.”
Thank you, Mike, for your years of service and sacrifice, your four combat tours, having over 200 parachute jumps, training young men and women, leading by example and showing how to be good at rejecting rejection.