A brother to all

Master Sgt. Randy Gillespie’s job was fuel, but his specialty was people.

To the airmen serving with him at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, the kids in Afghanistan whose schools he helped build and the Afghan soldiers he was training, he was a mentor and leader.

The 44-year-old died among those Afghan soldiers July 9, when their group was attacked during a check of fuel equipment. Four Afghans died, too.

“They couldn’t pronounce ‘Gillespie’ very well, so they called him ‘Sgt. G,’” Lt. Col. Michael Washington said of the Afghan soldiers. “As they got to know him, they called him ‘brother.’”

A memorial service was held Saturday in the Cadet Chapel at the Air Force Academy for Gillespie, a Colorado Springs native. Friends and family remembered him as a father of four who loved his family and his country and the people of whichever country he happened to be sent to over the many years of his Air Force career.

“Randy felt, at the time of his death, he was making a difference in the lives of the peace-loving people of Afghanistan he was caring for,” said Richard Brown, pastor of his church in Arizona, where he’d been stationed since 2000.

After moving from Colorado Springs to Coaldale when he was 14, he enlisted in the Air Force in 1983, and over the next 24 years was deployed 16 times.

The airmen he trained described him as strict but fair, a leader who could give you a severe dress- ing-down in such a way you’d still want to have dinner with him that night.

“He was a mentor to all of us and a really good friend,” said Tech. Sgt. Ben Contreras, from Luke Air Force Base.

Some lessons were about getting fuel to planes. But the most valuable weren’t.

“He always taught us to value what you have in your life at that time, because it could be gone the next day,” Contreras said.

Though he’d served all over the globe and the Middle East, this deployment — for which he volunteered — was to be more dangerous. He received combat training before going and carried a rifle.

Once there, he worked beyond his regular job to help build schools for Afghan children and get them school supplies.

It was much the same in Arizona, where he’d use his expertise to keep his church’s bus running and drive underprivileged kids on trips.

Much of his family still lives in the Pikes Peak region, and he dreamed of returning to Colorado after leaving the Air Force, so they wanted his funeral here. He will be buried at an undetermined location.

He is survived by his wife Lisa and four children.

“It’s because of men like my brother we all have our freedom today,” said his brother, Rick Gillespie of Pueblo.

Said brother Roger Gillespie, also of Pueblo, “Our family is devastated, but we are all very proud of him.”