Marine Corps Base Quantico -- James N. Strock’s first retirement in January of 2000, as a colonel after 28 years of active duty service in the Marine Corps, lasted two weeks.

“I probably washed the car and raked some leaves,” Strock said. “Then I went right back to work.”

On Dec. 18, Strock retired again after almost 14 years as the director of the Seabasing Integration Division within Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

Seabasing is an emerging capability. It allows naval forces to use the open seas for maneuvering, ensuring that they can rapidly respond to crises or the need for humanitarian assistance without first needing to establish land bases. Under Strock’s leadership, seabasing has gone from conception to reality.

“We now have real ships, landing crafts and high speed vessels,” Strock said. “It’s all done. Having had the opportunity to bring these concepts to reality has been a great honor.”

“Jim Strock is an institutional treasure,” said Shon Brodie, who is head of the Requirements and Assessments Branch within the Seabasing Integration Division and has worked with Strock since 1995. “There is no way anyone can replace him. He’ll be missed by the people he works for, not just the people who work for him.”

“Luckily, since he’s been first and foremost a mentor, each of us in the office have a little piece of his brain,” Brodie added.

Strock came from a military family. His father was in the Army Air Corps and his mother, Marilyn, was a sergeant in the Marine Corps. She was one of the models for the Molly Marine statue, which was dedicated in New Orleans, La., on Nov. 10, 1943, as the first monument in the U.S. of a woman in service.

Strock graduated high school in 1967 and attended The Ohio State University, a land grant college that required participation in an ROTC program for two years.

“In 1967, there was no doubt that you’d be going into the military no matter what,” Strock said.

He chose the Naval ROTC. His Marine Officer Instructor, Maj. Norman H. Smith, gave him his first exposure to Marine Corps leadership. Smith later became commanding general of the III Marine Expeditionary Force. When he retired, Lt. Gen. Smith was deputy chief of staff for Manpower and Reserve Affairs.

“He greatly impressed me,” Strock said. “He just had leadership written all over him.”

Strock was commissioned in 1971. He served first as an infantry officer and then as a logistics officer for the rest of his career. He also served as a ship’s combat cargo officer, the Marine officer representing the commander of a naval amphibious ship. He was stationed aboard the USS Durham, which participated in Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation of Americans and Vietnamese refugees from the country during the fall of Saigon.

In March of 1975, the Durham was in Pacific waters on a routine seven-month deployment when the situation in Vietnam started to deteriorate. President Gerald Ford ordered four U.S. ships to pick up refugees. The Durham collected thousands of women and children from the coast near Phan Rang.

“We had 3,700 people below deck,” Strock said. “They were stacked up like cordwood.”

Two black-and-white photographs Strock found online just recently show him as a young lieutenant, helping a Vietnamese woman and a terrified child onboard.

Strock said that the years following the Vietnam War were some of the toughest in his career. With the post-war drawdown of troops came strained budget circumstances and low morale.

“I was an infantry platoon commander. We had very limited resources with which to train and operate,” Strock said.

But some of his proudest moments in the Marine Corps were to come. In the 1980s, he was a logistics officer stationed at the Installations and Logistics department at Headquarters Marine Corps. In a foreshadowing of his future career, he was part of a team that wrote statements of work for the Maritime Pre-Positioning of Ships program (MPS).

In 1993, brand-new Col. Strock was in Okinawa, Japan commanding the 3rd Landing Support Battalion. While there, he completed the merger of that battalion with 9th Motor Transport Battalion to create the 3rd Support Battalion. It was the first-ever merger of that kind and resulted in the first of three active transportation support battalions.

“In all of these situations, I was simply provided the opportunity,” Strock said. “An old brigadier general once told me, ‘The harder you work, the luckier you get,’ and that’s been true for me.”

Strock was chief of staff for Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC) when he decided the time was right to retire from active duty.

“I’m grateful for having had the privilege of serving,” he said. “And I’m grateful to the Marine Corps for allowing me to stick around for so long.”

For the next two years, he worked for Logistics Management Institute, a nonprofit government consulting firm, participating in Partnerships for Peace logistics information exchanges in the former Soviet Union.

“I’ve been to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Georgia seven times,” he said. “I’ve travelled the Silk Road from Tashkent to Samarkand. It was a really neat array of experiences.”

But the General Raymond Davis building aboard Quantico lured him back. He began working for MCCDC in 2002 as the deputy director of the Warfighting Development Integration Division and he worked with restructuring the MPS program. By 2005, he said, the need for an organization dedicated to working with the Navy to define Marine Corps seabasing requirements was clear, so the Seabasing Integration Division was formed.

“We cobbled together a team,” Strock said. “It was like a pick-up ball team. But we’ve matured into who we are today.”

A number of the ships crucial to the seabasing concept have been completed. The USNS Montford Point, the lead ship in a class of Mobile Landing Platforms—ships that will serve as seagoing piers capable of supporting a vehicle staging area, a side port ramp, large mooring fenders and up to three landing craft air cushioned vessel lanes—was christened in 2013. This spring, it participated in seabasing exercises in the Pacific along with USNS Millinocket, one of five completed Joint High Speed Vessels capable of transporting company-sized units of Marines or soldiers along with their vehicles. Equally important has been the recent Secretary of the Navy decision to leverage the LPD 17 class ship hull form to replace the aging dock landing ships.

“We’ve gotten the ships in the water. That part’s done,” Strock said. “It’s the aggressive, innovative, eager Marines of today who will take that to the next level. The only limit to our future capability with these platforms will be the imagination of the Marines and sailors who use them.”

Strock says “it’s time” for him to step down and allow a new generation of Marines to become reacquainted with their naval roots.

“We’ve been fighting a ground war for the past ten plus years,” he said. “We need to get back to the sea.”

After he’s retired for good, Strock plans to knock a few items off his bucket list, including riding on a B17 bomber and getting his 1908 Sears Motor Buggy running. He said he’ll stay engaged with the business of his lifetime, but he’s confident in the ability of today’s “dazzling” Marines to carry on.

“I am absolutely confident and enthused about the ingenuity of today’s Marines and sailors to continue opening the aperture in how we think about future naval expeditionary capabilities,” he said.

— Writer: auphausconner@quanticosentryonline.com