Instructor Profile - Joe Caddell
Joe Caddell (click to enlarge)
Meet Joe Caddell - by Ursula Nebiker October 2016
Growing up in the Sandhills of North Carolina, Joe Caddell and his brother knew one thing for sure: they did not want a career in the medical field. Both their grandfather, father and mother were doctors who made house calls in their rural districts, and that just didn’t appeal. However, he recalls that if somebody had told him before he left high school in Pinehurst in 1972 and enrolled in UNC-Chapel Hill that he’d end up teaching history, “I’d have told him to take me out to the yard and shoot me. Being a history teacher struck me as of no interest whatsoever.”
This changed after he took a class in his freshman year with Jim Leutze, a new UNC professor of military history and western civilization. Joe was hooked; he had discovered his passion and he knew exactly what he wanted to do. In his high school days he had been one of those wise guys who thought he knew more than his teacher, a “real smart alec with an inflated opinion of my knowledge,” he admits. However, that attitude didn’t go over well with Leutze, a fine scholar and a popular teacher who was the catalyst in Joe’s decision to teach and who became his mentor.
Joe was smitten by the problems of war. He muses that “historians argue that you didn’t have civilization until you had war, and you didn’t have war until you had civilization, and that war is an unavoidable fact of human existence. Why do we have wars? How do they happen? How are they fought? And how do they end? Some people argue that the moments of rest between wars is called peace, and that’s a very cynical view.” After four years at UNC his mind was definitely made up: he was going to become a military historian.
Joe knew he should have some experience of military life, so in 1969 he enrolled in the Air Force ROTC and entered intelligence school. He spent six months in Denver, where he learned to ski and generally have a good time, then was sent up to Loring Air Force Base in Aroostook County in northern Maine. “You know you’re in trouble when the nearest town is called Caribou! It’s a big potato growing area, and even at 2 a.m. you could drive round and smell the potatoes being cooked in deep fryers to make frozen French fries.”
He qualified as an air intelligence officer, and as soon as he was released from active duty, Joe enrolled at Duke, which at the time had the number one military studies program in the U.S. under the leadership of Professor Theodore Ropp. Getting in was extremely competitive, but thanks to Prof. Leutze’s recommendation, Joe was accepted into the program, and in 1978 graduated with an M.S. He taught for a while at what is now called the National Intelligence University in Washington, D.C. and then began teaching at N.C. State in 1981 before getting his Ph.D. from Duke in 1984. After that, he helped administer the Triangle Institute for Security Studies as a Post-Doctoral Fellow.
Joe also lectures in UNC’s department of history, focusing on the topics of air power, sea power, military history, nuclear security in the 21st century, and intelligence history. He is a popular speaker and editor of many works on international terrorism and mass destruction, among others.
He’s has had three jobs since he graduated from college: “I was a bartender, an Air Force officer, and a university professor, and each one was a cut in pay.” His bartending career was working in a club selling liquor by the drink, which was illegal in Pinehurst at the time, but the authorities turned a blind eye and he made so much money managing the bar that he bought a Porsche. He still owns it, the only one that he’ll ever be able to afford.
He’d met Marcia MacHarg while still living in Pinehurst, where her family had moved from Michigan. They played on the same tennis team but just didn’t get along. “We fought so badly and constantly accused each other of cheating, so our pro decided to teach us both a lesson and make us doubles partners for a while, which turned out to be even worse.” The summer before leaving for UNC, they went to the movies for the first time, realized they could get along, and then started dating. They got married a year after Joe graduated from intelligence school and have been married ever since. They have a son and a daughter and three grandsons, and a fourth (unknown) on the way. His son lives in Alexandria, VA and works for the Dept. of Defense, and his daughter, who lives in Chapel Hill, is a pharmacist at the Greensboro Hospital and makes house calls in Alamance County to check on patients and to make sure they’re taking their medications.
Joe owns some 300 acres of inherited land in the Pinehurst area with an old 18th century home and a massive 200 year old oak tree, and many of his former students at Ft. Bragg love to go hunting there. He himself doesn’t hunt as much as he used to when he was younger. “I’m still theoretically hunting, but I mainly sleep in the woods, sitting under a tree with my rifle, and if a deer trips over me, it might be in trouble!” He also canoes, backpacks, and goes fishing.
This semester his OLLI class is focusing on the Second Battle of the Atlantic that was waged during World War II. As usual, his class is filled with long-time enthusiastic students (mostly men) who take every course he offers and who love hearing all his stories. “He’s a great raconteur,” says one, admiringly.
Growing up in the Sandhills of North Carolina, Joe Caddell and his brother knew one thing for sure: they did not want a career in the medical field. Both their grandfather, father and mother were doctors who made house calls in their rural districts, and that just didn’t appeal. However, he recalls that if somebody had told him before he left high school in Pinehurst in 1972 and enrolled in UNC-Chapel Hill that he’d end up teaching history, “I’d have told him to take me out to the yard and shoot me. Being a history teacher struck me as of no interest whatsoever.”
This changed after he took a class in his freshman year with Jim Leutze, a new UNC professor of military history and western civilization. Joe was hooked; he had discovered his passion and he knew exactly what he wanted to do. In his high school days he had been one of those wise guys who thought he knew more than his teacher, a “real smart alec with an inflated opinion of my knowledge,” he admits. However, that attitude didn’t go over well with Leutze, a fine scholar and a popular teacher who was the catalyst in Joe’s decision to teach and who became his mentor.
Joe was smitten by the problems of war. He muses that “historians argue that you didn’t have civilization until you had war, and you didn’t have war until you had civilization, and that war is an unavoidable fact of human existence. Why do we have wars? How do they happen? How are they fought? And how do they end? Some people argue that the moments of rest between wars is called peace, and that’s a very cynical view.” After four years at UNC his mind was definitely made up: he was going to become a military historian.
Joe knew he should have some experience of military life, so in 1969 he enrolled in the Air Force ROTC and entered intelligence school. He spent six months in Denver, where he learned to ski and generally have a good time, then was sent up to Loring Air Force Base in Aroostook County in northern Maine. “You know you’re in trouble when the nearest town is called Caribou! It’s a big potato growing area, and even at 2 a.m. you could drive round and smell the potatoes being cooked in deep fryers to make frozen French fries.”
He qualified as an air intelligence officer, and as soon as he was released from active duty, Joe enrolled at Duke, which at the time had the number one military studies program in the U.S. under the leadership of Professor Theodore Ropp. Getting in was extremely competitive, but thanks to Prof. Leutze’s recommendation, Joe was accepted into the program, and in 1978 graduated with an M.S. He taught for a while at what is now called the National Intelligence University in Washington, D.C. and then began teaching at N.C. State in 1981 before getting his Ph.D. from Duke in 1984. After that, he helped administer the Triangle Institute for Security Studies as a Post-Doctoral Fellow.
Joe also lectures in UNC’s department of history, focusing on the topics of air power, sea power, military history, nuclear security in the 21st century, and intelligence history. He is a popular speaker and editor of many works on international terrorism and mass destruction, among others.
He’s has had three jobs since he graduated from college: “I was a bartender, an Air Force officer, and a university professor, and each one was a cut in pay.” His bartending career was working in a club selling liquor by the drink, which was illegal in Pinehurst at the time, but the authorities turned a blind eye and he made so much money managing the bar that he bought a Porsche. He still owns it, the only one that he’ll ever be able to afford.
He’d met Marcia MacHarg while still living in Pinehurst, where her family had moved from Michigan. They played on the same tennis team but just didn’t get along. “We fought so badly and constantly accused each other of cheating, so our pro decided to teach us both a lesson and make us doubles partners for a while, which turned out to be even worse.” The summer before leaving for UNC, they went to the movies for the first time, realized they could get along, and then started dating. They got married a year after Joe graduated from intelligence school and have been married ever since. They have a son and a daughter and three grandsons, and a fourth (unknown) on the way. His son lives in Alexandria, VA and works for the Dept. of Defense, and his daughter, who lives in Chapel Hill, is a pharmacist at the Greensboro Hospital and makes house calls in Alamance County to check on patients and to make sure they’re taking their medications.
Joe owns some 300 acres of inherited land in the Pinehurst area with an old 18th century home and a massive 200 year old oak tree, and many of his former students at Ft. Bragg love to go hunting there. He himself doesn’t hunt as much as he used to when he was younger. “I’m still theoretically hunting, but I mainly sleep in the woods, sitting under a tree with my rifle, and if a deer trips over me, it might be in trouble!” He also canoes, backpacks, and goes fishing.
This semester his OLLI class is focusing on the Second Battle of the Atlantic that was waged during World War II. As usual, his class is filled with long-time enthusiastic students (mostly men) who take every course he offers and who love hearing all his stories. “He’s a great raconteur,” says one, admiringly.
Editor's Note : If you would like to show appreciation to the profiled instructor, you can email to instructor-profile@olliatduke.org
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