Son promotes father: 1st Lt. Steven B. Moon does the honors during a May ceremony in North Carolina for Col. Steven R. Moon …
Father promotes son: Then-Lt. Col. Moon presides over newly minted 1st Lt. Moon’s ceremony in Afghanistan last year. (Army photos)
A parent presiding over a child’s promotion ceremony is rare enough. Being able to arrange such an event in a war zone is verging on the impractical, but can happen.
But organizing such a promotion, then following it up inside a year with the child promoting the parent? That makes you the leader in the family-friendly clubhouse, and that’s where you’ll find the Moon men, thanks to a May 15 ceremony in Aberdeen, North Carolina.
There, 1st Lt. Steven B. Moon pinned O-6 insignia onto Col. Steven R. Moon, a reservist serving on active duty at the Institute for Military Support to Governance, part of Fort Bragg’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.
The younger Moon, with 4th Infantry Division out of Fort Carson, Colorado, had been on the receiving end of a promotion in July at Afghanistan’s Kandahar Airfield. His father, then based in Kabul with a special operations planning and liaison team assigned to Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, shifted his schedule to allow a trip to Kandahar and a few hours of free time to spend with his son.
Unlike the Afghanistan ceremony, the Moons were able to spread the family joy from North Carolina, broadcasting via FaceTime to multiple relatives, according to an Army Reserve Command news release.
Both Moons hail from Schertz, Texas, outside of San Antonio, and their family military history long pre-dates any cross-generation promotions.
“My father was a sergeant with Patton in North Africa,” the elder Moon said in the release. “I was thinking of how proud he would be to see his son and grandson being promoted as officers in the Army and Army Reserve. He’d grin ear-to-ear.”
