By JEFF LAMPE
For The Weekly Post
As if the honor wasn’t enough, being promoted to colonel earlier this year comes with an added bonus for Elmwood native Kyle Shoop.
After spending the past few years working a desk job in the Pentagon and handling money matters, Colonel Shoop will soon be doing what attracted him to the military in the first place: flying.
“I work on budgetary things here, and it’s been interesting to see how the sausage gets ground,” Shoop said Monday from his Pentagon office. “But I’m glad my permanent assignment is not in this field. I’d rather be back leading Marines and flying planes.”
Shoop, 43, is slated to take command of Marine Aircraft Group 12 in mainland Japan in the summer of 2023. He will be in charge of three attack air squadrons, a C-130 squadron, a Marine Wing Support Squadron, a logistic squadron and more than 1,000 personnel.
“And I will get to fly,” Shoop said. “These command positions are the reason you stay in.”
They are hard to come by, though. There are currently 649 colonels in the 180,000-person Marine Corps. And former Lt. Colonel Shoop was one of 102 selected for promotion out of 718 who were screened this year.
That’s a long way from the young boy who loved to attend air shows with his dad, Bob Shoop of Elmwood, and his grandfather, the late Robert Webster, father of his late mother, Kathy Shoop.
“I ended up where I am now because of going to air shows with my grandad back when I was a kid,” Kyle Shoop said. “The biggest was in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin. That got me interested in aviation.”
It’s an interest he has never lost. Once Kyle graduated from Elmwood High School in 1996, he went to the U.S. Naval Academy, where in 2000 he earned a Bachelor of Science in Control Systems Engineering.
After graduation, he selected Marine Corps aviation and went to basic school and flight school, earning status as a Naval Aviator in the fall of 2003.
He was deployed to Iraq in 2006 and came back to take part in the Navy’s TOPGUN training in 2007.
From there, Kyle has steadily moved up the military ladder while earning numerous decorations and deployments, flying missions around the world and accumulating more than 2,900 mishap-free flight hours.
That is a source of pride for his father, Bob. The elder Shoop recalled a conversation with a general who had flown with Kyle in Iraq. Said the general, “He’s the best pilot I’ve ever flown with.”
Kyle Shoop’s deployments include Operation Freedom’s Sentinel in Afghanistan in 2018 and Operation Inherent Resolve, as well as many that sound much less glamorous.
“These jobs are career-broadening on purpose to groom you for following assignments if you chose to take one,” Kyle said.
Through all his travels and time abroad, Kyle has not lost track of central Illinois. He and his family still return at least once a year. And he was well aware that the Brimfield girls basketball team had won a state tournament over the weekend – no surprise since his wife, the former Sara Callison, is from Brimfield. They have two children, Elizabeth and Bradley.
“That’s a big deal to win state,” he said. “I loved the small-town basketball.”
Kyle, who is a life-time member of the Elmwood VFW, said he has many other fond memories of his time in Elmwood.
“I had a great experience in high school playing sports … all the festivals and town activities … just the sense of community and knowing everyone,” he said, rattling off a few. “We have grown to appreciate that more as we have grown older.”
