Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
As Chief of Medical Logistics for the Army’s 92nd Evacuation Hospital, Greg Padovani was prepared at a moment’s notice to deploy on behalf of troops on the battlefield and allied nations in crisis.
The eldest of four boys, Greg Padovani was born in Chicago to Gregory and Rose (Bianco) Padovani. The family moved from their attic apartment on Leavitt Street to a house in Mount Prospect shortly after Padovani’s birth. His father’s family emigrated from Padua, Italy and his mother’s family came from Naples and Palermo.
Every Sunday, family gathered at his paternal grandparents’ home for dinner. “Grandma loved to cook for us,” Padovani says. “Ravioli was her specialty, but we had all kinds of other Italian foods. It was just some of the best food I would remember.” Padovani’s mother’s specialty was lasagna and she taught her sons and their wives how to make it. “On holidays we have her recipe for lasagna,” he says.
Padovani graduated from St. Raymond Catholic Grade School and Forest View High School. Influenced by his grandfather and uncle, who fought with the Navy during World War II, and his father, an Army operating room technician, Padovani applied to the Naval Academy. Turned down because of his eyesight, he enrolled at the University of Illinois Chicago, joining the ROTC. Padovani graduated in 1974 with a degree in biology and commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps.
In January 1975, Padovani reported to Medical Service Corps Officers Basic at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio for the three-month course. From there, he transferred to Fort Hood, Texas, assigned as the Medical Platoon Leader of a 900-soldier Mechanized Infantry Battalion, the 2nd Battalion, 58th Infantry, of the Second Armored Division. “We’d go out to the field and our medics would go with the line companies and we’d set up an aid station and then we’d simulate casualties,” Padovani says. “We worked through the basic activities we would have had to perform, especially out in the field during all conditions: rain, darkness, heat, cold, you name it.”
Padovani led a platoon of medics and medical personnel, including essential vehicles and equipment. “We provided the medics to the line companies of the infantry and also ran the aid station in the battalion rear area,” Padovani says.
He trained and prepared his men to be on call, ready to deploy wherever and whenever needed. “If a soldier were injured on the front line, our medics would patch him up and stabilize him, our ambulance drivers would bring him back to the aid station out of combat, and then at the aid station our senior medics would further stabilize him and we’d evacuate them to the hospitals in the rear area,” says Padovani.
He served nine months at that assignment and after completing Medical Logistics School, Padovani became the Chief of Medical Logistics for the 92nd Evacuation Hospital, one of the big combat hospitals in the rear combat area. Stationed once again at Fort Hood, Padovani conducted field training with his hospital along with tracked and wheeled vehicles and helicopters. All of the equipment for the 400-bed hospital under tents was stored in warehouses, ready to go.
Every facet of an actual combat evacuation hospital was available and readied, including vehicles. Every soldier was trained in his/her specific job duty. Huge tents that took 15 soldiers to raise housed the operating rooms and the wards. Triage areas would be set up where casualties were assessed based on how urgently they needed medical care. “You take your best surgeon and your best nurse and you put them outside at the triage and it’s the hardest job in the whole hospital because as casualties would come off the helicopters or off the ground they had to assess each and every one of them individually,” Padovani explains.
The 92nd Evac Hospital deployed to Guatemala City, setting up a 200-bed hospital to provide aid after the area suffered devastating earthquakes. Padovani and his men stayed up for days taking the “hospital” out of the warehouse and putting it onto C130s. “I never left the U.S.,” Padovani says. “My job was to continue to load the airplanes with any supplies that they needed down there.”
Once the hospital was set up and running, helicopters flew doctors and nurses into mountain villages where roads had been wiped out. “The people there were in a bad way,” Padovani says. It was the first time some of the villagers had ever seen a doctor. “They saved a lot of people, some they brought back in the helicopters to the field hospital,” he notes. “They did a lot of good that way and then they came home.”
Padovani was on active duty for 18 months before he was “RIF’d” (Reduction in Force) out after the fall of Saigon. He returned home to Chicago, worked during the day, attended DePaul University in the evenings and joined the Army Reserve.
Padovani was posted to the 30th Hospital Center at Fort Sheridan as Chief of Medical Logistics. “We were the command-and-control center for three Army Reserve hospitals and 20 or 30 Army Reserve medical detachments spread all over northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin,” says Padovani.
As an officer, Padovani often worked more than one weekend a month and the annual two weeks. He was with the 30th Hospital Center until 1982, when he transferred to the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center at Fort Detrick in Maryland as an Individual Mobilization Augmentee. The unit was not part of any of the Armed Services, though there were more than 100 members from all military branches. “It was a very unique unit,” Padovani says. “We were attached directly to the National Security Council.”
Padovani was assigned as Technical Information Specialist. He was given questions or research tasks and access to databases and medical libraries to find the answers. “They’d give you these little questions, like a jigsaw puzzle. They give you a little piece and say find out about this little piece. You don’t know where it fits into the big picture,” says Padovani. “You only know that somebody, like the analysts and the higher-level people, they had the big picture and knew what they were assembling. We didn’t.”
After 12 years of serving his country, Padovani retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as Major. He and his wife, Charlene (Mockus), have two children. Padovani has been involved in the health care industry his entire career and since 1998 has been president and founder of the Patient Education Newsletter System, PENS. A longtime veterans advocate, he is active in numerous organizations, including a 20-year stint as chairman of the Veterans Memorial Committee of Arlington Heights.
Padovani reflects on his military career, “It was probably the most intense time I could remember because you’re on call 24/7. You knew there was always the chance that the president would call on the Army to do something and then we’d get the call and we’d better be ready,” Padovani concludes. “You had to be in a state of readiness.”
The article above appears in the March 2025 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.
