Marine ensures supplies get to front lines

MCLB Albany — It’s not often that a boy from Texas becomes a fan of the New York Yankees, but Lt. Col. Amando Ruiz III says that his father taught him at a young age to appreciate excellence – a belief he has carried into his military career.

“He just always appreciated greatness,” Ruiz said. “And when it came to greatness in sports, when I was growing up, it was the Yankees in baseball, the Celtics in basketball and the Dallas Cowboys in football.”

Today, Ruiz still appreciates greatness and says that he sees it in the team that helps him, as deputy director for Supply Management Center for the Marine Corps, get much-needed supplies to units on the front lines of a war.

With 26 years in the Corps, Ruiz has found himself at the nerve center of the USMC’s Logistics program in Albany and says there is nowhere he would rather be.

Ruiz started his military career at Camp Lejeune, N.C., at 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines 2d Marine Division where he helped keep balanced a small $325,000 budget for equipment maintenance.

From that point, Ruiz’s orders have swept him in a whirlwind throughout the Marine Corps global network of installations. From Camp Lejeune to Albany to 29 Palms in California and onto Fallujah in Iraq, Ruiz has run the gamut of assignments throughout his career.

And, at each duty station, Ruiz has maintained the same goal: strive for excellence, do the best you can and help the Marines get the supplies they need.

“For me the biggest challenge is the biggest reward,” Ruiz said. “What is the condition of our equipment and do the right people have the supplies they need; those are my two biggest concerns.”

To address those concerns, Ruiz has a team that he relies on to work with units around the world to develop priority lists and get supplies to where they are needed as quickly as possible.

“Sometimes you get tunnel vision and become so focused on your mission that you don’t appreciate all of the other hands that go into getting a piece of equipment from point A to point B,” Ruiz said. “When you do experience it, the coordination and effort of all is something to behold.”

Ruiz said he learned that firsthand on a recent deployment to Kuwait when the retrograde and reset operations set the stage for getting serviceable equipment from Iraq into Afghanistan.

“All of the units that are involved; from our people here to the load masters on the planes who have to load the equipment in a particular way, to those folks on the ground; you really don’t appreciate how many different units are involved in a project until you see it first-hand.” he said.

Still a big baseball fan, Ruiz continues his love of the game by relishing the Bronx Bombers anytime he can manage to catch a game.

Married 23 years, Ruiz says he and his wife, Norma, enjoy living in Albany and raising their two 17-year-old Chihuahuas in the Good Life City.

“I’ll say this about the people here,” Ruiz said. “They have a great appreciation for the military. I’ve been stationed in a lot of places and it’s not like that everywhere. Here, we are respected and treated in a way that I really appreciate and that makes coming to work each day a pleasure.”