By Bill Petzold
Editor
SAGINAW — When retired U.S. Army Col. Danny McKnight speaks, he keeps it real.
McKnight will be a featured speaker and will be signing copies of his book, Streets of Mogadishu, during the Saginaw Spirit’s Military Appreciation Night scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at The Dow Event Center, 303 Johnson St. in Saginaw.
McKnight is best known for serving his country during a 1993 raid in Mogadishu, Somalia, that became the subject of a 29-part series of newspaper articles by Mark Bowden published in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Bowden then wrote a book called Black Hawk Down based on his articles, and the book was adapted into a 2001 movie of the same name.
McKnight was portrayed by actor Tom Sizemore in the film, but he’s anything but Hollywood in real life. McKnight and his wife Linda reside in Rockledge, Florida, and McKnight makes a living these days traveling around the country and speaking to groups about leadership.
“It seems like they’re going to have me doing a whole lot,” McKnight told The Advertiser on Monday. “I think I’m going to help re-enlist some soldiers at the local reserves, they’re going to take me to visit the VA hospital (in Saginaw) — they have a lot of things planned besides the big event. I’ve told them the more the merrier, especially when it’s associated with veterans. People think veterans are only the ones in uniform — us old guys that are retired.
“Everbody who wears a uniform is a veteran, whether it’s past or present. Once you put that uniform on, you become a veteran for the rest of your life.”
Leadership is McKnight’s subject of choice for his speaking engagements, and he uses examples from the situations described in Black Hawk Down to illustrate his points.
Having a battle-tested knowledge of leadership, McKnight is an outspoken critic of the leadership of the United States.
“I wanted to tell the rest of the story,” McKnight said of his book. “It’s not Black Hawk Down over again, but it’s very leadership oriented. My full-time motivational speaking
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focuses on leadership. Tomorrow I’ll be speaking to a 100, maybe 150 law enforcement personnel, and I will be hammering away on leadership. I think leadership is something we don’t do very well in our country.
“I don’t know why it happened or when it happened, but we are more attuned to trying to satisfy people and their pet projects than we are making decisions for the best interests of of our country. We need to make the hard, right decisions. We have some thigns going on today we haven’t handled properly. We did the wrong thing when we didn’t attack ISIS. We had an opportunity to do it when it was easy; now it’s not easy anymore. That kind of thing causes a problem. We’re mishandling the ebola situation worse than I ever could have imagined. We let people go to five different hospitals. … That’s the problem I see in our country. We’re not willing to make the hard, right decisions. We want to pacify everybody. It’s really very basic, and if we would just back away and look at how we got to be the greatest country in the world … we’ve got to commit to being the greatest country in the world. We need to remember we’re the greatest country on Earth.”
McKnight will meet with fans and sell and autograph copies of Streets of Mogadishu, with a portion of the proceeds going to Military Families United.
Military Families United is a national coalition that offers programs and resources for Gold Star families who have lost a family member in the line of duty, Blue Star families who have a loved one currently in the military, veterans and those who simply wish to support and honor U.S. military personnel past, present and future. MFU founder John Ellsworth will be a guest speaker at the event, and a special $13 ticket to the game includes a $5 donation to Military Families United.
Doors open at 2:30 p.m. for a free pre-game event that includes a chance to buy McKnight’s book and speak to him, as well as inflatables for the kids, musical entertainment by the Leo Feith Band and the Tittabawassee Drum and Fife Corp, and representatives from military support organizations who will be on hand to speak to veterans and help them get connected with the services available to them.
The Spirit will square off later that evening at 7:11 p.m. against the Soo Greyhounds wearing special military jerseys that will be auctioned after the game by Art Lewis. All veterans and active duty military will receive a free ticket to the game.
Vassar-based vocal group Brothers in Song, which includes Clayton Burley, Fred Welsh, Dale Kneff, Dave Arnold, Bob Kost and Tom Burley, will perform near the end of the pregrame and also is scheduled to perform the national anthem. McKnight will drop the puck at the start of the game, and there will be a special recognition of Gold Star Families.
Two veterans will be honored at the start of the game, including Vassar’s Alexander Gorashko of Vassar, who was a Prisoner of War (POW) during World War II, and Dallas Mossman of Clio, who spent 817 days as a POW during Korea.
Gorashko survived a harrowing plane crash after he and his crew were shot down over Nazi-occupied Romania. He spent months in a German POW camp.
Mossman, a Flint native, enlisted at age 17 for World War II, and was captured by the Korean Army on May 17, 1951.
For more information about Military Appreciation Night, call Dan Weigl at (989) 497-7747 or email dweigl@saginawspirit.com.