HOW A FAMILY TRADITION OF SERVICE SHAPED THREE GENERATIONS OF FATHERS
MILITARY
By Mac Caltrider | June 19, 2022
Sitting in his family’s modest living room, 10-year-old Travis Denman watched as footage of US Army Rangers suspended from parachutes drifted across the television screen. America’s lightning invasion of Grenada was being broadcast on every news channel by the time Denman realized that his dad’s most recent work trip was not the usual field training exercise in the backwoods of Fort Lewis.
Travis’ father, Jesse Denman, was a medic with the 75th Ranger Regiment and among the men tasked with seizing Point Salines International Airport, just outside the Grenadian capital of St. George’s. The Rangers steamrolled the airport’s defenders, commandeered some bulldozers to use as mobile cover, and then secured the airport at the cost of eight Rangers who were killed in action. In just four days, American forces controlled the entire island nation.
Denman Family
Jesse Denman in Vietnam, where he served as a door gunner on a UH-1 Huey. Photo courtesy of Travis Denman.
But what Travis remembers more than watching his dad’s unit descend on Grenada was the homecoming they received when they returned to Washington.
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