Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 21, 1994 TAG: 9402210014
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: Long
"The cadets don't need another authority figure at VMI. They want me to be a friend. . . . What they expect from me is forgiveness and love."
Say again?
Isn't this the school with the Rat Line, in which first-year students are berated, browbeaten and driven to their emotional and physical limits to instill in them the steely discipline necessary for military leadership?
Yep. This is the place. And Caudill is a strong supporter of the VMI tradition and mission.
But he's not the enforcer. He's the chaplain.
The 61-year-old Air Force veteran will retire at the school year's end.
"I couldn't have picked my life better," he said, his ever-present grin widening.
He seems satisfied that the past 15 years have been exactly what were intended for him - to be a friend and spiritual leader for a generation of VMI cadets.
It was a road he didn't foresee when, as a high school student, he first told his father that he wanted to be a minister - the sixth in a direct line of Caudills to join the ministry.
To his surprise, his father advised him, "If you can be anything else, don't."
Caudill was sure of his call, however, and was ordained an elder in the Methodist church and granted a license as a local preacher while he was still in high school in North Carolina.
He went on to the Methodist-affiliated Duke Divinity School and was ordained before his graduation.
By then, he knew he didn't want to be the preacher in a local church and hoped he wouldn't have to give up completely his childhood ambition to fly.
An offhand comment to a friend about the need for religion in the military started him thinking about becoming a chaplain. He went straight out of divinity school to the Air Force chaplaincy.
He spent 23 years in the service, rising to the rank of colonel. He served three years in Vietnam, ministering to wounded soldiers.
"To know there is a God - that is the only thing that matters when the time comes" and a soldier is facing death, he said.
In crisis, he said, "we [chaplains] represent everything they're really willing to die for." It's not for an airplane or a tank or a ship, he said, but for family and faith.
Later, he oversaw the training of chaplains for joint service in any of the military branches. At age 46, he went to jump school to get his wings as a paratrooper. Because he was serving an airborne division, he felt he needed to know what they went through.
By the late 1970s, he made another offhand comment to a friend about how he might like "to go to a small college and be a chaplain."
Caudill decided to follow up on a lead that VMI was looking for one, even though he was preparing for a tour of duty in Korea. He retired from the Air Force and took on the VMI uniform on Aug. 1, 1979.
By that time, the youngest of his three sons, Chris, also was on his way to VMI as a cadet. Those years brought father and son closer, Caudill says, and both received rings as members of the class of 1983.
"It's the only year a father and son received the same class ring," Caudill says with pride.
His other two sons, twins Mike and Mark, are former Air Force officers who now work for the federal government.
At VMI, Caudill apparently has been successful at pulling off the difficult dual roles of father figure and intimate friend with 15 years' worth of cadets.
"He's the most influential person in my life other than family members," said Teddy Gottwald, a 1981 graduate who's president of Ethyl Petroleum Additives of Richmond.
"He was always around at VMI when cadets needed him. . . . It was comforting to see him there at 5 a.m. as we ran around the parade ground until we dropped."
Steve Hupp, a 1984 graduate who's an engineer for Estes Express Lines in Richmond, said every cadet "knew we could count on him when we needed him."
Caudill provided both leadership and fellowship and "was my father on post," Hupp said.
Both Gottwald and Hupp said Caudill taught one of the most influential classes they took at VMI: a class on marriage and family. The class was the most popular on post, they said.
"I can't tell you the benefits" of that class, Hupp said. It didn't sugarcoat marriage but dealt with difficult issues from sex to emotional relationships.
Cadets' participation in any activities sponsored by the chaplain are strictly voluntary, Caudill said. So he knows some of the cadets who show up for his weekly Bible study are there to meet girls who attend from nearby colleges.
And he understands that "they don't seek me out if they're going to a party."
They have looked for him afterward, though, if they get into trouble. A few have needed bail money. Mostly though, they've needed advice, counsel and support, Caudill said. New cadets find him early.
"The first two months [of the school year] are hell for me," Caudill said.
First-year cadets may be reduced to tears in his office after enduring the abuse of the Rat Line.
In his first five years at the school, Caudill also was an instructor. But, he said, he felt compelled to give up that part of his job because he didn't believe it was reconcilable with his primary responsibilities as chaplain.
His job was to "inspire - and sometimes kick their tails" but not be part of the system that was obliged to judge their value as cadets rather than as people.
His salary is paid half from state funds and half from VMI Foundation funds. Neither he nor the school has ever felt a church-state conflict over that since no student is compelled to attend a chapel service or make use of the chaplain's services at all. And, he points out, many governmental institutions - including the armed forces - use public funds to pay chaplains.
When he came to interview for the post, Caudill said, he was struck by a statue of the first VMI superintendent. In one hand, Francis Henney Smith is holding a diploma. In the other is a Bible.
Caudill later found out that Smith provided each graduate with a Bible upon graduation. It seemed like a good idea to resuscitate.
Today, graduates who request them get either a Protestant or Catholic Bible, a Torah or Koran. Nearly every cadet asks for the personalized holy books.
But it's for neither the books, nor the financial assistance from his chaplain's fund nor the chapel services, that Caudill wants cadets to remember him.
He hopes they'll say, "His hugs were for real. He blessed me."
There seem to be plenty of "amens" to that.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB