Let It Rain

A few days after the 4th of July in 2024, one of my commanders was hit and killed in a freak car accident. Brigadier John Pogorek was the commander of the NH Air National Guard and he was a fantastic person to work for. Pogo, as he was often called, was one of the most down to earth, caring, and humble leaders you could meet. One week prior to the accident, I can distinctly recall him rounding the corner of the stairwell and in his ever cheery voice say, “Oh, hello Michelle.”

Pogo was one of the first people I met in the unit, back when I was still in the Army National Guard. Within minutes of meeting him, he was trying to recruit me, a distant and laughable notion at the time. Ironically, just one year following our initial meeting, I was welcomed to the unit as a member of the Air National Guard and had, then, Col Pogorek as the Wing commander. In my new role, I had the opportunity to sit in on and participate in many higher-level leadership meetings. I watched Pogo as he listened intently to everyone around the table, always staying reserved in his thoughts until everyone else had spoken. He never claimed to know everything and was vocal about having the experts at the table to help guide his decision making. But when he made a decision, he made the decision with confidence and conviction. Markings of a true leader. When things went well, he gave all praises to every other person involved. When things went poorly, he owned every ounce of failure.

I will never forget the call I got from Pogo on Friday March 20, 2020. 

“Michelle, do you know anyone in the Medical Group who has experience with building up medical clinics and knows what it takes to run them?” he asked cautiously, half expecting my answer to be “no.”

“Uh, I guess, I do, Sir,” I confessed equally hesitantly. What he described was literally my job while deployed to Iraq.

“Can you report tomorrow at 0700. The state needs you to help set-up some sort of hospitals to get ready for the influx of COVID patients. I don’t have any other information and I don’t know how long this mission will be.”

How could I say no to that? The next day, I was activated to establish the proof of concept for our state’s acute care site model, train others on how to do it also, and then oversee multiple other sites’ development.

I had regular check-ins with Pogo throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Our unit was entrusted to support the state in a variety of missions. It was long, hard, and challenging. All the while, Col Pogorek had to manage the policies, morale, welfare, and safety of the Wing. He made a point to visit every site throughout the state to show his support and worked to advocate for whatever resources were needed to keep our people warm, fed, and sane, even if other leaders felt the situation was good enough under the circumstances. Pogo didn’t care. He did what was right.

General Pogorek was a no-frills kind of guy. When he was just about ten years from retiring from the military, he bought a substantial parcel of land and decided to take up farming with no prior experience. Not the cute little cherry tomato and corn farming. The slaughtering kind of farming. Multiple times a week, I would spy his truck leaving the base at lunch with an empty bed, and then return thirty minutes later with a full load of some sort of wood product hanging out the back. He once shared a story, with noises and visual re-enactments, about how one of his large pigs got loose down the road and the only way to get it back home was to smack its ass all the way home. It was a hilarious story that I’m pretty sure earned him a stern talking to, but it made me laugh. It was clear that he liked to stay busy.

Before the multiple meetings that I sat in on with him, the group would often discuss the weather. If it had just rained and everyone complained that their weekend plans were ruined, Pogo would say, “We need the rain.” If people kvetched that their grass was dying during a drought period, Pogo would say, “We need the rain.”

Since his passing, every time it rains or it is dry too long, I think of his words, except I don’t equate them to falling water drops. The rain is John Pogorek. We need more Pogos in the world. More people who understand that they don’t know everything and that is okay. More people who surround themselves with smarter people in order to get better results. More people who try new things even if they have no experience. More people who show support for the things that matter. We need more people who believe in others during times of uncertainty. 

Brigadier General John Pogorek was a fantastic leader and took chances when necessary. He maintained transparency and took care of people. I will miss him and talking about gardens and our children. I will never forget the potential he saw in me as an outsider. I will try to be the Pogo we need more of in the world. Seek those rain drops in yours.