Veterans Day: The Cold War warriors among us

November 11, 2011

General Mills Corporate Communications

Rick Eckstein, hatless in the back row at a submarine base in Nerpich’ya, Russia, in April of 1996. This is a group photo of the Russian and American teams during an inspection of nuclear weapons.

You just never know who may be sitting in the office cube nearby. He or she may have been a bona fide Cold War warrior – straight out of a Tom Clancy spy novel.   Take Rick Eckstein, for example. The senior logistics operations planner with General Mills Supply Chain played a key role during the 20th century Cold War between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. 

As a Russian linguist and cryptographer (the deciphering of codes) during the nine years he served in the U.S. Navy between 1988 and 1997, Eckstein spent six months underwater on “fast attack submarines” during the era when the Soviet Union was crumbling. (It collapsed in 1991.)

“It was a lot like that Tom Clancy novel, The Hunt for Red October,” says Eckstein. “A lot of the crew on that submarine didn’t know what we were doing or where we were going.”

Nuclear arms inspector Eckstein also made 15 different trips to the former Soviet Union as a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) nuclear arms control inspector and interpreter. His job – sometimes in remote locales like Siberia – was to count nuclear warheads on inter-continental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.

“We were the eyes on the ground to verify that the Russians didn’t have more missiles than they said they had according to the treaty,” says Eckstein.

Today is Veterans Day in the United States, and Eckstein is just one of many veterans who work at General Mills. But his experience may well be one of the most interesting.

He had one of the highest government security clearances possible, and has been to many top secret military installations in both Russia and the U.S. (He also served as an interpreter when the Russians inspected U.S. military missile bases.)

And you can tell from the dour expressions in many of the photographs on Soviet military bases that it was no picnic in the park.

“It was a lot like inviting your neighbor in to look inside your closets,” says Eckstein. “They didn’t want us there, and we didn’t want them here, either.”

Join the Navy: See the world He got the bug to study language on a backpacking trip through Europe with a friend he met while studying at the University of Iowa.

“I thought 'I need to get a job so I can do this. I’m going to join the Navy and see the world – just like the cliché.'”

And that’s exactly what he did.

Eckstein's first year was spent learning Russian at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif. He spent the remaining eight years in Turkey, Japan, underwater on a submarine, and based in Washington, D.C., when working as an arms control inspector and interpreter around the globe.

“There weren’t a lot of people who wanted to go to Turkey, but I said, ‘sign me up,’” says Eckstein.

To this day, he doesn’t reveal much information about what he did and where. But he does concede that he had a lot of fun and cherishes his “military family.”

“You’re with them all the time. You get to be really close quickly.”

‘Peace through strength’ Not only was he a witness to history during the waning days of the Soviet empire, but he also was an active participant in carrying out the policies of one of his personal heroes, former President Ronald Reagan. Reagan's “trust but verify” and “peace through strength” mantra was central to the U.S. foreign policy approach toward the former Soviet Union.

His current role as the deployment team lead within the Snacks supply chain – which includes several team members based in India – may not have the intrigue of a Tom Clancy novel.

But Eckstein says his military training has served him well in being able to relate to people from different cultures and generations.

“On day two in the Navy you are taught to be a leader,” he says.  

 

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