After more than seven years in the Marine Corps, Chuck Venegoni found himself on a path of service that continues to this day.
Venegoni, 51, of Imperial, a Rock community firefighter, recently earned the rank of sergeant first class in the Army National Guard and returned home after his second deployment in a three-year period.
He resumed his Rock Fire duties on Nov. 5 after spending 13 months stationed along Texas’ southwest border. In 2020, he completed a 10-month assignment in the Washington, D.C., area. His company was in charge of evacuating the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., if there was an emergency.
Venegoni said he joined the Marines to earn money for college but decided he enjoyed military service and continued it longer than he originally intended.
“I really liked being part of the air crew. I did that for two tours with the Marine Corps, and then I got out,” he said. “I decided to become a fireman and got on (at Rock Fire). I missed flying, so in 2011, I got back in boots and got back in the aircraft.”
Venegoni said he graduated from Lutheran South High School in 1989 and was a Marine until 1996. He used money from the GI Bill to attend paramedic school while working in the emergency room at St. Anthony’s Hospital, which is now Mercy Hospital South in south St. Louis County.
“That was crazy times; I worked night shifts in the ER,” he said.
During that time, Venegoni also was a volunteer firefighter with the Springdale Fire Protection District before it merged with Shady Valley Fire to form the Saline Valley Fire Protection District.
He said he began working for the Rock Community Fire Protection District in 1999. He joined the National Guard in 2011 and serves as a crew chief on transport helicopters, making sure passengers and cargo are safely loaded and unloaded as well as making sure everything is working properly on the helicopter.
“If anything breaks, the pilots ask you what is going on,” he said.
As part of his duties with the National Guard, Venegoni must complete training during an extended weekend one month of the year, plus another two to three weeks during another month throughout the year. He also may be deployed for months when needed.
Rock Fire Chief Kevin Wingbermuehle said it is never a problem to find a way to cover Venegoni’s duties when he is fulfilling his National Guard commitments.
“We are very proud of his service to the country and community, and we are honored to have him as one of our members,” Wingbermuehle said. “We understand the importance of the commitment and will do whatever is necessary to support our service members. His time away is a benefit to the district as much of his military training and experience can be directly applied to the fire service.”
Wingbermuehle said Venegoni is Rock Fire’s only active military member, but of the district’s 59 employees, seven are veterans. Division Chief Mike Shafferkoetter and captains Dave Dacus and Kirk Uhrig served in the Navy. Division Chief Matt Ham and inspector Chris Lindner were in the Air Force, and captains Eric Bollinger and Cory Vaughn served in the Army.
“We experience quite a bit of interest from active and former military service members,” Wingbermuehle said. “Because the structure and operations of the fire service is similar (to military), I believe the transition is more natural than that of most other careers.”
Texas deployment
For his most recent deployment, Venegoni said his company was assigned a Department of Defense-approved mission to work with customs agents and border protection personnel in Texas.
He said while it was not a secret mission, he is not allowed to share details about the assignment.
“We ran a day shift and night shift that switched every two weeks,” Venegoni said. “It could get exhausting switching back and forth.”
During his time in Texas, he kept in touch with his wife, Vickey, and their three sons – Owen, 18; Landen, 14; and Mason, 10.
“It is not like the 90s, when you were on your own,” Venegoni said. “It is nice to be able to call your family and do Facetime. It helps out a lot.”
Venegoni also remained in contact with Rock Fire, regularly communicating with Uhrig.
“We talked every couple of weeks,” Uhrig said. “We would touch base and see how things were going with his deployment and what was going on here at Rock. I just tried to keep him in the loop. I was military many years ago. It is difficult, even when it is a domestic deployment, when you are away from your regular life.”
The deployment became tougher in August when Venegoni’s youngest son had a medical emergency.
He said Mason was at a hockey camp and one day while the players were outside swinging a baseball bat, he was hit in the head. When Mason was taken to the hospital, medical personnel discovered he had a brain tumor that required surgery.
“It is kind of a miracle,” said Venegoni, who returned home to be with his family during Mason’s hospital stay. “He had to have brain surgery. He is doing fantastic. He is scheduled to have another MRI in November, and he will have an MRI every three months for a couple of years to make sure it does not grow back.”
Venegoni said Rock Fire helped support his family during the medical scare.
“They did a meal train,” he said. “The chaplain supported us. It was anything we needed.”
Uhrig said it is natural for Rock Fire members to support each other.
“At this department, and I’m sure all fire departments, because we are in a position of compassion and serving, it just kind of happens,” he said. “We have a care committee who addresses any kind of situation. It was established to fill in gaps when we can. People just naturally step up.”
Closing time
Venegoni said he is ready to spend more time with his family, so he likely will retire from the National Guard in the next couple of years, and he does not expect to be deployed again.
“I can’t stress it enough how strong Vickey has been through all of this with keeping the family together with three boys and the drama that comes with teenagers,” Venegoni said. “It is nice to be home and help get the kids ready for school and stuff like that. It is nice to be back in the routine and making sure they are taken care of.”
Uhrig said it is good to have Venegoni back at Rock Fire.
“He is greatly committed to his country, community and family,” he said. “He is a neat guy. I’m glad he is back.”
Still serving
Five military veterans continue to serve others, working as paramedics for the Rock Township Ambulance District.
Chief Jerry Appleton said full-time paramedics Nick Marty, Cody Bishop and Tony Guinn and part-time paramedics Brody Eller and Zac Collins served in the military. Collins is still in the military, serving as a reserve officer in the Army.
Marty, Bishop and Eller each served in the Army National Guard, and Guinn was a member of the Air Force. Collins had served in the Air Force before joining the Army Reserve.
“I’m proud of all of our veterans, whether they work here or not,” Appleton said.
He said the district has 46 full-time employees and 20 part-time paramedics.
“The fact that (members of Rock Township) have chosen to continue their service to others makes it even more special,” Appleton said. “There are a lot of people who are service above self, and that all starts with our veterans. We are proud to have them.”
Bishop, Collins and Marty talked about their military journeys in the days leading up to Veterans Day, which is Friday, Nov. 11.
Bishop
Bishop, 34, of Imperial was a member of the National Guard from 2006 to 2014, and he has been a paramedic with Rock Township for the past two years.
“It was something I always wanted to do in high school,” Bishop said of joining the military.
During his junior year at De Soto High School in 2006, he signed up to become a member of the National Guard.
“They had incentives and programs for people to join,” Bishop said. “You did some basic training and finished after graduating. I joined the Guard with expectations of paying for college and then going active.”
He said after graduating from De Soto, he took a year off to go to Africa and then started attending college in Kansas City. In 2012, during his senior year of college, he was deployed to Afghanistan.
Bishop said he was a combat engineer, and his unit performed route clearance for a year.
“For most of the tour, I was a gunner on a Mark 19,” he said. “I did other stuff like post-blast analysis. If there was any kind of blast, we collected evidence so a team could do forensics on it.
“I also was exposed to emergency medicine. That is how I got into (being a paramedic).”
Bishop said he left the National Guard to start a family with his wife, Maggie. The couple has four children – sons Sam, 8, and Isaac, 5, and daughters Lilah, 3, and Grace, 1.
He said being in the military helped prepare him for life as a paramedic.
“The paramedic lifestyle can be really slow, then superfast,” Bishop said. “In the military, it is the same way. We would say hurry up and wait in the military. Also, the discipline as a paramedic to continue to be educated and the mental discipline to block out some stuff is very similar to the military.”
Collins
Collins, 38, of Imperial began working part-time at Rock Township this year, after completing paramedic training at St. Louis Community College in 2021.
He was a member of the Air Force from 2002 to 2006. He said he was a senior airman E-4 and imagery analyst.
“I looked at predator drone footage and YouTube plane footage,” Collins said. “The first year, I was stationed in Korea at Osan Air Base, and the majority of the rest of the time in Virginia at Langley Air Force Base.”
He was deployed to Iraq for nine months in 2006, and after he returned home, he decided to leave the Air Force.
“It seemed like there were a bunch of opportunities in the job field I was in,” Collins said. “When I got out, I worked at a company in the same office I was working in. I walked out one day in a military uniform and walked in the next day in civilian clothes.”
However, after a year, he left Virginia to return home to Illinois and started attending Shawnee Community College in Ullin, Ill.
Collins said he missed the structure of being in the military and in 2009, he tried to re-enlist in the Air Force. He said at the time the Air Force was not accepting prior service members, and he joined the Army.
“(The Army) told me I had two options to stay close to home,” he said. “I could either be a truck driver or a medic. Medic had a $7,500 enlistment bonus. I was like why not, and it turned out I liked it.”
Collins said he was deployed to Kuwait in 2011, where his unit provided intermediate care before someone was sent home or to Germany, if they needed specialty care.
He said after returning from Kuwait, he worked different jobs in Hamel, Ill., and Troy, Ill., before going to paramedic school. He said he is happy to work for Rock Township because district officials are willing to help him juggle his military and paramedic schedules.
“Rock Township has been great about it,” Collins said. “I give them my Army schedule, and when my (Rock Township) schedule runs into the drill schedule, they take me off.
“A company willing to say, ‘Do your thing and don’t worry about it; everything will be here when you come back,’ takes a load off because you know you don’t have to stress about that on top of everything else you are doing.”
Marty
Marty, 30, of St. Louis served in the National Guard from 2010 to 2017, and he has worked at Rock Township for the last two years.
He said he joined the National Guard when he was a junior at Windsor High School, and later he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. In 2014, he was deployed to Afghanistan, where he was a heavy equipment operator.
“We were helping with the original plans for a pullout that got scrapped. We were shrinking bases down to get rid of materials,” Marty said of the six-month deployment.
He said he left the National Guard because a career in emergency medical services was more interesting to him, and he became a paramedic when he returned from his deployment in 2015.
Marty said he was 15 when he first got interested in being a paramedic.
“I was a lifeguard at the Arnold rec center,” he said. “We had to call 911, and Rock Township came after someone fell near the indoor pool. I enjoyed the excitement and the teamwork aspect. It seemed like they moved in a coordinated effort with a purpose to get the person in the ambulance.”
Marty said he is happy he has the chance to help people as a paramedic, much like the way he helped people when he was in the National Guard.
“Being a paramedic, I wanted to be of service to people in my community, and by extension, by being a member of the military, I wanted to be of service to the people in the country,” said Marty, who has a wife, Alex Marty.