In June 2023, President Joseph R. Biden appointed U.S. Army Gen. (Ret.) Michael X. Garrett to the American Battle Monuments Commission, and was elected chairman by his fellow commissioners in August.

Garrett, born in Cleveland, Ohio and raised on military installations across the world, has spent his entire life in and around the U.S. Army. He is the proud son of Lola Garrett, a U.S. Army spouse and life-long public servant, and Command Sergeant Major Edward Garrett, a Vietnam War combat veteran and Silver Star recipient.

An alumnus of both the Department of Defense High School in Baumholder, Germany, and Xavier University in Cincinnati, Garrett began his own Army journey in 1984. He served his formative years in the elite 75th Ranger Regiment, and over a decade was assigned to and wore the scrolls of the Regiment’s headquarters and each of its three Ranger battalions.

Garrett went on to command his own formations in the 82nd Airborne and 25th Infantry Divisions, served multiple combat tours in the Middle East, and ultimately led 750,000 combat and support personnel within the Army’s largest organization: Forces Command.

After 38 years of active service, he retired as an Army four-star general, and continues to build connections with U.S. service members and their families, patriotic communities across America, and soldier-friendly universities and businesses. Upon retirement, he was inducted by his own son as a Distinguished Member of the 75th Ranger Regiment, and is the recipient of the Ellis Island Honors Society Medal of Honor along with honorary degrees from Methodist and Xavier University.

Florent “Flo” Groberg served in the U.S. Army from 2008 to 2015, and is a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the United States’ highest military honor, for his extraordinary gallantry, intrepidity and heroism while serving in combat operations in Afghanistan in 2012. Today, Groberg leads the Microsoft Azure Global Government M360 Mission Solution Team. He is responsible for working with governments worldwide to identify key missions and systems that should operate on the Azure Cloud. He holds a master’s degree in management with a specialization in intelligence policies from the University of Maryland University College in College Park, Md. He is married to Carsen Groberg, with whom he has a dog named V and a cat named Ranger.