Retired Gen. Frank McKenzie talks life, leadership and his new book

Tampa resident and retired General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie recently published his memoir “The Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st Century.”

McKenzie, the former head of Central Command and current executive director of the University of South Florida’s Global and National Security Institute, sat down recently with 83 Degrees Media to discuss his life, military service and the new book. 

McKenzie describes his upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama as middle-class and happy. His Southern roots stretch back to before the Civil War. So does his family’s military service. 

McKenzie’s father served in Korea with the Alabama National Guard; his grandfather guarded Puget Sound during World War I; and his great-great-grandfather fought with the 16th Alabama during the Civil War, remaining at the rank of private for the four years of the conflict. McKenzie smiles when he recounts that bit of history, no doubt enjoying the irony of being a four-star general who descends from a soldier who never got promoted. 

A good student who enjoyed reading, McKenzie was selected in his sophomore year of high school to participate in a program for gifted students. 

“It’s where I really learned to read and write,” he says. “I wasn’t a great student, but it was a great experience.” 

Throughout high school, McKenzie worked for his father, a Birmingham News and Post Herald distributor, driving the truck and “throwing papers.” He says the work was hard, but the schedule was a good fit. The morning paper came out before school and the evening paper after. 

While at Shades Valley High School in suburban Birmingham, McKenzie enlisted in the Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force. He obtained his private pilot’s license while still in high school. In the summer of 1974, while McKenzie was away at camp, a cadet recruiter for The Citadel came to give a presentation. 
McKenzie describes The Citadel as a very good military college, perhaps the premier one in the U.S. It’s also a liberal arts college and that appealed to him.

“The opportunity to go there and major in English was very attractive,” he says.  

McKenzie entered The Citadel in August 1975. 

“I had decided I wanted to be a Marine,” McKenzie says.

He never changed his mind about being a Marine, not even during basic training at Officer Candidates School at Quantico during the hot summer of 1978.  

“I enjoyed the physical challenge, and I enjoyed the idea of leading people,” McKenzie says. “I wanted to be an infantry officer. If you want to stay in the Marine Corps for the long term, infantry is the organization to be in. I graduated from The Citadel and was commissioned in 1979, along with thirty to forty of my class.” 

“Nobody thought I’d ever be a general," McKenzie says with a smile. "I didn’t think I would be a general. Believe me, nobody would have picked me.”

“My good friend, Glen Walters is the other four-star Marine general from our class,” he says. “He is president of The Citadel now. We often joke about it when we talk to some of the instructors from that period. They didn’t think Glen or I would hang around. It just goes to show you, you never know what people are going to do.”

As a young, newly commissioned lieutenant with a four-year commitment, McKenzie was deployed to Korea in a rifle platoon. 

“We did a good job, but I wasn’t on fire”, he says. “I got lucky. I came back to Marine Barracks, Charleston, a big naval base with submarines and nuclear weapons.” 

McKenzie spent the next three years in Charleston where he says he felt himself start to change. “I became intensely competitive.”  

It was during this time that McKenzie met his wife, Marilyn.

“She would tell you that it was marrying her that did it, that lit the fire,” he says.

They married in 1983. The next year, McKenzie went to the Armor Officer Advanced Course at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, where he finished as a distinguished graduate. 

“Something flipped a switch,” he says. “Maybe I was slow to mature. I am now probably as competitive as any human on this planet. I don’t like to lose. I like winning. I can’t tolerate anything less than excellence. Those characteristics came to dominate me.” 

“Finding the right woman may have done it," McKenzie explains. We’ve been married for 41 years. Marilyn embraced being a military wife and she was good at it. She had a full career teaching school for 30 years. We have one son, who went to the Naval Academy. Served as a Marine infantry officer, like me. He deployed twice to Afghanistan where he saw extensive combat. He did six years active duty, got out, and got an MBA, married a Penn State girl. We have three grandsons.” 

“I’ve been very lucky,” McKenzie concludes.

A certain amount of luck certainly figures in McKenzie’s career, but only as a minor player to that self-described drive for excellence. 

Coming to Tampa, Centcom

The McKenzies first came to Tampa in 2010 when Gen. James Mattis became the head of Central Command, Centcom, located at MacDill Air Force Base. At the time, McKenzie was Mattis’ strategic planner and policy advisor. 

“We loved the city…Marilyn loved it,” he says. “We lived on base. We joined the Tampa Yacht Club; we made a number of friends”. 

After additional postings, McKenzie returned to Tampa in March 2019 as the head of Central Command. About that time, he says, “I enjoyed being a combat commander, it was very challenging.” 

One of the challenges during McKenzie’s command was overseeing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

“What happened in August [2021] was directly attributable to either American arrogance or American exceptionalism,” he says. “You can choose the word you like. To believe you can leave and still be a player; you can’t.”

“After three years at Centcom, it was time to go, to do something else”, he says. 

In April of 2022, McKenzie retired from the Marine Corps after 42 years of service to his country.

“We knew we wanted to live in Tampa,” he says. “We bought a house in South Tampa that we love. We joined Palma Ceia Country Club and we joined Stovall House. We were going to stay here.” 

“Typically, what a four-star does is, you’re on the lecture circuit, you sit on boards,” McKenzie says. “I knew Rhea Law, the president of the University of South Florida, socially from when I was in command at Centcom. She had been recruiting me to come here to run the Global National Security Institute and the Center for Cyber Security. I now do both those things for the university. I also sit on a couple of outside boards and do other things as well.” 

One of those other things is his recently published book. “The Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st Century,” published by the Naval Institute Press, provides a window into McKenzie’s leadership and decision-making at the highest levels of the military.

“As the commander of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie oversaw some of the most important, and controversial, operations in modern U.S. military history,” a description in the book reads. “He had direct operational responsibility for the strikes on Qasem Soleimani and two successive leaders of ISIS, the many months of deterrence operations against Iran and its proxies, and the methodical drawdown in Iraq. He directed the noncombatant evacuation operation in Afghanistan and the United States’ final withdrawal from that tortured country.” 

When asked how the book came about, McKenzie says, “I wanted to write something that captured my time at Centcom command. A lot of it I had in my mind. It’s the research that takes the time. I can write very quickly once I get started. It gives me pleasure to write.” 

All proceeds from “The Melting Point” are donated to three military-affiliated charities.