CORPSMAN WITH A HEART FOR THE HEART
Please feel free to be surprised that I am
writing about a veteran holding a patent for “The integrated bandage and
electrical stimulation transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) device.”
In veterans-speak, Kent Riddle is a
surprise-mill. From, “My military roots go back to the Revolutionary
War,” he fast forwards to World War II, “My dad went down on the USS Yorktown
during the Battle of Midway – he was in the water 13 hours before being
rescued.”
Evidently, that was enough Navy for his father
-- he joined the Air Force and retired as a master sergeant.
The Riddle military roots did not stop with Kent
Riddle or his father, “My son, Jeff has a degree in criminal justice from
Appalachian State University and did counter-terrorism operations in the Coast
Guard. My other son, Ben was a combat engineer in the Marine Corps and
deployed to Iraq two times.”
As an Eastern Tennessee teenager, Kent Riddle
enlisted in the Navy in 1966 – think Vietnam War, “I wanted to be a submariner
– they wanted me to be a corpsman.” Marines consider Navy corpsmen as
Marines, and Riddle’s career path reflected as much – Camp Lejeune, the
Philippines and Vietnam.
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| CORPSMAN KENT RIDDLE IN VIETNAM |
“Serving as a corpsman taught me God’s will for
my life – I felt destined to take care of other people.” Riddle earned a
nursing degree from East Tennessee State University in 1973. Much like his father had done after leaving the Navy, Kent
Riddle joined the Air Force – as a member of the Nurse Corps.“
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| RIDDLE LEFT U.S. AIR FORCE AS MAJOR |
“After Flight Nursing School, I served in aeromedical evacuation. We were more like flying hospitals.
In flight, it’s you and the patient -- you are called upon to perform
diversified medical procedures. I learned that performing intensive care
and emergency room procedures at 30,000 feet in altitude is quite different
from land-based operations.
I have always been attracted to treatment of the
heart. When the discovery and advancement of interventional heart procedures such as coronary angioplasty came along, I knew I had to be a part of it.”
Given the opportunity to supervise the Cardiology Department of Madison General Hospital in
Madison, Wisconsin, Riddle left the Air Force as a major.
After a few years, Riddle went with a California
firm which developed many of the early breakthroughs in heart treatment and the use of medical devices.
He traveled all over the country and Europe, making suggestions for
device improvements and enhanced treatment techniques.
Riddle became the California firm’s first
product manager, but was attracted to another California start-up
which dealt with a different cutting edge treatment of the heart – stents.
“In the early days, angioplasty worked for a
while, but the arteries often tightened up again. Early stents saved
lives by keeping arteries open longer, and as the industry improved, the
success rate grew exponentially.”
Working during the frontier days of interventional cardiology and over
the next 25 years, Riddle constantly sought
ways to improve heart treatment and medical devices. He ultimately earned
two medical device patents – one pertaining to filtering blood clots and the
second, which was mentioned in the first paragraph, which dealt with pain
management.
“One day I realized my heart wasn’t in sales,
stock prices, inventory levels, or return on investment – my heart was still in
nursing. I walked away from private enterprise, took a year off, rode my motorcycle across country, cleared
my mind, and came back to Greensboro to resume my nursing career.”
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| RIDDLE SERVES AS RN/NURSING SUPERVISOR FOR THE SERVANT CENTER |
Two years ago, Riddle found The Servant Center.
Or vice versa. “Serving as nursing supervisor at the Servant House
has brought me full circle in nursing. My duties now are similar to what
I did in the military, except I do sick call for a barracks filled with homeless
veterans instead of Marines.
“While the veterans under my care will not
deploy to the Persian Gulf after their time at the Servant House, they will
face significant obstacles transitioning from homelessness back into society.
Given that some of them have multiple medical issues, it is my job to
help them make this challenging re-entry as seamless as possible.”
Kent Riddle and his son, Ben helped each other cope with their
memories of war. “Ben kept a small
potted sugar maple tree in his barracks at Camp Lejeune. He asked me to
care for it when he deployed. I planted it in our back yard and prayed
over it each night until Ben came back home – it is now over 25 feet tall!”
Riddle chairs the Americanism Committee of the
Greensboro Elks Club and was recently named 2016 Veteran of the Year. He has lived in Greensboro since 2005.
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| KENT RIDDLE MOMENTS AFTER BEING NAMED ELKS CLUB VETERAN OF THE YEAR -- 2016 |
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