Becoming all he ever wanted: Minister recalls path through military that led him to serve God, country

As a kid, Gene Ennis occasionally accompanied his father to the elder Ennis’ job at Fort Benning, Georgia, and loved every minute of those visits. So it was only natural that the youngster aspired to a military career.

By the time he was old enough to enlist, however, both legs had been broken, and he was flat-footed. Thus, he was declared 4F — physically unfit for military service. He was crushed.

“I felt like I’d been cheated,” said the longtime Trussville resident, who is now recognizable in the community for his lengthy ministerial service at First Baptist Church Trussville.

Years after being declared unfit, a friend suggested the Army National Guard as an option. By then Ennis had gone to school to become a preacher, married hometown sweetheart Opal Herring and started a family, and was serving as a pastor in New Orleans. But it so happened the Louisiana Guard was in dire need of Protestant chaplains, a rare species in that Catholic-dominated part of the state.

“I told them I was 4F, and they said, ‘Well, let’s give you a physical,’” he recalled.

With perhaps some help he passed, but the Guard failed to tell him he’d been accepted. A few months later, Ennis and his family moved to Mississippi.

“The next thing I know, I get a call from somebody telling me I was AWOL, that I’d joined the Louisiana Guard and never showed up,” he said. “I told them I didn’t even know I’d been approved. So that was the start of my military career. It was 1966.”

Ennis first served with the 34th MASH Hospital Unit in Mississippi, then with the 167th MECH Infantry in Alabama. Around 1970, he went to airborne school, earning his wings at an airbase in Florida and eventually making 27 jumps out of the base’s planes. He then spent five years as a chaplain with the 20th Special Forces Group, which covered Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

Along the way, Ennis transferred from the Guard to the Army Reserves, where he served as a staff chaplain with the 87th Maneuver Area Command and the 121st Army Reserve Command. He also served as an assistant staff chaplain with the Alabama National Guard.

In 1991, about the time Ennis received a letter of retirement, he also received notification that he was about to be activated.

“I said, ‘I just got a letter of retirement,'” he recalled. “And they said, ‘We know. Tear it up.’ So I went from being discharged to serving three more years on active duty.”

During those three years, Ennis served with Forces Command as director of administration and management in the Office of FORSCOM Chaplain. He ultimately received a Legion of Merit award for developing a database of chaplains and chaplain assistants while working there.

Before that, the military had “no idea, no database, no nothing” with regard to chaplains, Ennis said.

He retired in 1994 at the rank of full colonel.

On the civilian side of life, Ennis continued all along to serve in churches around the Southeast. In 1972, he and Opal moved their family, which by then included young sons Randall, Les and Jzyk, to Trussville, where he served as First Baptist’s education minister for the next 12 years.

From 1984 until he was called to active duty, he served as pastor of First Baptist, Bowdon, Georgia. In 1993, Ennis returned to First Baptist Trussville to serve as its minister of missions until retiring in June 2000. The church later honored him by renaming its missionary house the Ennis House.

A widower since 2008, the 81-year-old Ennis now divides his time between Trussville and his childhood town, Smiths Station, where he enjoys a “retirement job” as an outreach minister at Philadelphia Baptist Church.

But as much as he has always enjoyed church work, he treasures his military days and considers them a dream come true for a kid who only wanted to serve God and country.

“It’s been the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “The military has confirmed for me over and over and over again that what I’ve done is OK. I guess it goes back to having a bit of an inferiority complex from being turned down in the draft. Back then we were all patriotic and wanted to serve, and my buddies went but I had to stay home.”

In the end, though, things worked out just the way he’d always hoped — and maybe even better.

“I never wanted to be anything but a preacher in uniform,” he said. “And with God’s help and a lot of support from a lot of people, I was able to do it.”