Photo By Master Sgt. Rachelle Morris | Lt. Gen. Scott “Rolls” Pleus, Seventh Air Force Commander, stands ready for a...... read more read more
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Two truths and a lie – Lt. Gen. Scott “Rolls” Pleus, Seventh Air Force Commander, took his first flight at two weeks old, his grandparents owned a restaurant in Paris, and he is a huge Green Bay Packers fan.
As the son of a traveling salesman, Pleus was raised in a nomadic nature similar to that of a military brat. Despite the frequent changes of scenery, one thing stayed the same, love of flight.
“My mom used to tell me a story that I was less than two weeks old when my dad piloted my first flight,” he said. “For my 14th birthday, my mom and my dad paid for half of my private pilot lessons and then I worked odd jobs to pay for the other half. I had my pilot’s license before I had my driver’s license.”
Flying wasn’t the only talent his family instilled from a young age.
“My grandparents owned a restaurant in Paris, France, and my mother worked there growing up, so she taught me to cook,” Pleus said. “She had my father build steps to the stove when I was three years old.”
As he became a world traveler, he took what his mother taught him and capitalized on the ingredients each culture provided.
“You try to maximize what you have available to you, so when we were in Alaska it was a lot of fish and game, from moose to bear to deer” he said. “Here in Korea it is like a completely different grocery store and you take full advantage of that.”
Despite his endless travels, he decided to call Minnesota home.
“It is where my wife’s family is from,” Pleus said. “I attended the University of Minnesota-Duluth which is where I met Jennifer and then joined the Air Force through the ROTC program there.”
After completing college and pilot training, he married his college sweetheart and in the 29 years since, they have raised three children. Every member of the family shares a passion for one particular mid-west past time.
“I grew up on hockey skates, so I am fan of all things hockey and so is my entire family,” Pleus said. “My wife was a cheerleader for our college hockey team and all my kids played hockey growing up.”
He is also inherently a Minnesota Vikings fan.
Right up there with his love of flying, cooking and sports, is the Seventh Air Force. After two previous tours to the ROK and countless TDYs, he said he considers this more of a homecoming than a PCS.
“I have always enjoyed the culture,” Pleus said. “I love the people. I love the food. I love the fact that the mission in Korea is a single focusing element that everybody understands. There truly is no other place in our Air Force where the focus on mission is central to everything we do.”
And it’s the people doing the mission that really bring him joy.
“As the Seventh Air Force commander, I still have the opportunity to fly F-16s but the reason I have stayed in the Air Force is because of the people,” Pleus said. “The proudest moments of my career have been watching people succeed when they didn’t think they could.”
So while they push themselves, he also strives to push himself.
“I think a successful leader has to have the ability to bring together a diverse team and to lay out a path for continued success for that team,” Pleus said. “Within that, you also have communication skills, the ability to enforce standards and discipline, a level of technical competency, and then, finally, the ability to empower your people so that they can get the job done.”
His focus is simple.
“My priority is to just try and make things better” Pleus said. “There will be thousands of challenges that we will have to overcome to make that happen. We are focused on the mission, and there are always impediments to that mission. My focus will change from day-to-day in order to fight tonight.”
And when the day comes for him to pass this charge on to the next generation of leaders, he hopes he and his wife can continue their travels keeping up with the next generation of Pleus’.
“Wherever we end up, it will have to have a capability for us to be mobile so we can go around and see my kids and their future families and grandbabies,” he said.
| Date Taken: | 09.22.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 09.22.2020 02:39 |
| Story ID: | 378325 |
| Location: | KR |
| Web Views: | 1,307 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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