Emmett Shaffer III
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series on the Brookfield Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023.
Emmett Shaffer III has done some pretty serious stuff – flying helicopters for the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia and founding a company that has contracts with Boeing, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy.
But, he hardly seems serious when you speak to him, relating that his emphasis in high school was on fun and sports and that the only reason he took a typing class was because it was the class the cute girls took.
There’s a middle ground between seriousness and fun, and Shaffer is happy to occupy it.
“Pick a passion that you’re gonna have fun in,” he told Brookfield High School students. “That’s what I did.”
Shaffer’s passion is flying. The son of a career army man, he was introduced to flying through his uncle, Archie Fitch, who refueled planes at what is now the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna. Shaffer started taking flying lessons at age 12, soloed for the first time at 16 and got his pilot’s license at 17.
Flying was a great way to get dates, he said.
Intrigued by his father’s military service – the elder Emmett Shaffer was once former Republic of China leader Chaing Kai-shek’s senior military adviser – but unsure that the military was for him, Shaffer studied business administration and economics at Youngstown State University through the ROTC program.
After college, the 1977 Brookfield High graduate joined the army and learned to fly helicopters. Stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., Shaffer rose through the ranks and saw action in Grenada in 1983, flying night missions with the U.S. Coast Guard to identify suspicious vessels.
Additional training led him to be qualified as a test pilot.
In introducing his brother at the awards ceremony, Don Shaffer continued to describe the story of his older brother’s career: “Emmett’s been in the army now for four years, qualified with six different aircraft and he’s a qualified maintenance test pilot at that point in his career,” said his impressed younger brother, who followed Emmett into the military, but for the air force.
Emmett Shaffer oversaw and directed supply and logistic support functions in Germany and participated in operations along the East German border during the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
He was deployed for Operation Desert Storm to establish logistics support operations and provide security to Iraqi Kurds.
“This is when his career started getting interesting,” Don Shaffer said.
In 1991, Emmett Shaffer was assigned to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, flying Navy Seals and Army Rangers and Delta Force members on covert missions. He even flew for the CIA and the FBI.
While commanding Company F, Shaffer was sent to Somalia as part of the U.S. aid mission in 1993, which targeted the warlords that had taken over the country.
“On Oct. 3, Emmett lost 18 comrades, including five of his closest friends, in the Battle of Mogadishu,” Don Shaffer said. “The operation was later characterized in the Jerry Bruckheimer film ‘Black Hawk Down.’ Emmett would later receive the Bronze Star for his actions during the operation.”
Shaffer retired as deputy commander of the 160th in 2003. He noted he was due to be promoted from lieutenant colonel to full colonel.
“Once you become a full colonel, your days of flying are stopped,” Emmett Shaffer said.
While Shaffer missed the missions and the people he served with, retirement gave him the opportunity to do something he said he should have done years earlier – he started his own company. With his wife and fellow BHS grad Patty Radford Shaffer as chief financial officer and his brother as vice president, Emmett Shaffer created GEN4 Services LLC. The company has two aims, to get Department of Defense contracts and to help other companies secure contracts with the government,
“Since then, the company has garnered over $30 billion in contract wins for major defense clients,” Don Shaffer said.
GEN4 has contracts with the navy to fight litigation and the air force to rig heavy drop loads for C-5 and C-17 cargo planes at Joint Base Charleston in South Carolina, and recover and repack the dropped payloads. It also packs parachutes at two other air force bases.
While his careers in the military and as a civilian business owner did not come without years of training, hard work and sacrifice, Shaffer credited his hometown school system with giving him the tools he needed to follow his passion.
“Brookfield school system provided me the opportunity to do what I did – fly in the 160th,” he said.
Now living in Nashville with houses there and in Florida and owning a golf course, Shaffer said, “I’m still trying to figure out what I’m gonna do when I grow up.”
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The Brookfield Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame will induct its next class at 10 a.m. Sept. 14 at Tiffany’s Event Center, 601 Bedford Road, Brookfield.
Inductees will be Kathryn Yazvac Ferrara, Fred Paulenich, Joan Riccardi Humphrey, Alex Nagy (posthumous), Ray Blakeney and Dr. Erin Hennessy Cockrell.
Tickets are available at the school board office, 579 Bedford Road, or by calling Diane Riefstahl at 724-346-9615. Deadline to purchase tickets is Sept. 6.
