CHAPTER EIGHT
In late1996, Lieutenant Colonel Jack Hastings was reassigned to the Pentagon requiring the couple to move back to their home in Fairfax County. Jana was pleased to return to the area and was delighted to get a faculty appointment in the nursing school at George Washington University. She had long wanted to transfer her clinical experience into a teaching situation, but with no prior instructional work, she was surprised when the position was made available to her. Hastings worked in materiel procurement for the joint armed services. This gave him exposure both inside and outside of the Army. His specific work amounted to the investigation, testing, and purchasing of individual weapons for soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. There was significant travel required for his duties. Neither he nor Jana seemed to mind the separations, having gotten used to them earlier in their marriage.
Life in northern Virginia was made even more pleasant by the assignment of Lieutenant Colonel Sam Merriman to the Military District of Washington. He and Sonya purchased a home in nearby Arlington, Virginia allowing the Hastings and the Merrimans to get together often. Jana got to know and love her sister-in-law Sonya. The two found that they had much in common and enjoyed spending time together. They drew all the more closer when their husbands were drawn away by the requirements of their jobs.
Jack Hastings saw another opportunity after 9/11 in seeking an assignment with the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC as it was known. With special operations becoming more and more important in the war on terror, he believed that future command positions, and the promotions that were sure to follow favored officers who had special ops experience in their records. With Jana settled into the nursing school at GW, and the fact that JSOC would require significant travel in and out of hostile environments, Hastings decided to commute to Fort Bragg, down in North Carolina, where the new position was based. It proved to be a wise career move on his part when he was promoted ahead of schedule to Colonel.
Always the politician, Jack Hastings had maintained contact with old acquaintances, from the Academy and elsewhere. Some of these old friends could be found in positions of influence in numerous departments and agencies around Washington. Through his network, he became aware of a quasi-diplomatic post that was to become vacant. He made the necessary contacts and got himself assigned as the military attaché to Mexico. Again, he elected to make the trip to Mexico City alone, knowing that his job would take him back and forth from Washington. Jana was more than happy to remain at home in Fairfax.
Colonel Hastings caught the eye of the senior U. S. military leadership as well as the State Department in 2006 when he successfully negotiated the release of the kidnapped son of the Vice President of Mexico from a crazed drug gang operating out of Tampico, northeast of Mexico City on the Gulf of Mexico. Although he laughed it off as simply being in the right place at a bad time, which was true, the deed earned him Congressional nomination for his star as a brigadier general. The fact was that Hastings had taken a secretary from the embassy for an illicit secluded weekend on the gulf and wound up being in the perfect place to negotiate the kid’s release. None of the old boys from West Point, knew the whole story, but would not have been the least bit surprised.
General Hastings returned to the Pentagon to serve out his remaining years in the Army. He earned his second star before retiring in September of 2010. Though his Army career could have continued, and he could have earned higher rank and greater responsibility, he saw opportunities outside of the military. To the great surprise of many, and the disappointment of a few, Major General Jack Hastings left active military service after a long and admirable career.
At the time of his separation from the Army, Jana was ready to end her tenure at George Washington University. Her contribution to the nursing program was well recognized by the faculty and staff. It was with heavy hearts and great disappointment that they bid her farewell. Knowing that the future lives of retired military officers were often tied, at least in part, to that big five-sided building on the Potomac, the Hastings maintained the house in Fairfax. But Jack’s business interests took him back to Oklahoma where he and Jana purchased a sprawling two hundred acre ranch with a large and comfortable home outside of Fort Sill. The proximity to the base gave them access to all it had to offer, not the least of which was healthcare at Reynolds Army Hospital, one of the best in the system.
The Prosecution of General Hastings Page 9
