Unarmored Talk

When the Decision Comes: Choosing Between Military Duty and Family

• Keyth Pankau • Episode 128

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How do you choose between a remarkable military career and putting family first?

Keyth Pankau, a retired U.S. Coast Guard officer, shares his journey from serving in Fallujah with the Navy Seabees to leading humanitarian missions after Hurricane Katrina. Despite a passion for disaster response and crisis management, Keyth’s most defining moment came when he prioritized his daughter’s future over his career.

In this Unarmored Talk podcast episode, Keyth reflects on the emotional challenges of this decision and the lessons he learned about leadership, sacrifice, and identity. We explore how his faith and values provided clarity during one of the toughest choices of his life and how stepping back from the Coast Guard allowed him to embrace his role as a father. His story is one of service to his country and his family, with profound insights for anyone facing a difficult crossroads.

Tune in on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. Visit Keyth's socials here: https://www.paradedeck.com/creator/8r1z5qdi

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Mario P. Fields:

Welcome back to Unarmored Talk Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and watching each episode and continue, please, to share with your friends and family members and colleagues, and don't forget to leave a rating or review if you feel this is an awesome show. And you can connect to all of my social media on the Parade Deck Just look in the show notes. Media on the parade deck just look in the show notes. Or you can put in the search engine Mario P Fields parade deck and get all access to my social media. Well, let's get ready to interview another guest who is willing to remove their armor to help other people.

Mario P. Fields:

Welcome back to the unarmored talk podcast. Everyone. Again, if you're a first time listener and viewer, if you're watching this on YouTube, welcome to this amazing that's my belief, amazing show. I mean you can check out the reviews on some of the audio and video, and if you have been listening to us more than one episode or watching one more than one episode, I thank you for your continued support Again, as we rapidly approach our fourth year anniversary. You guys have been amazing and I'm going to continue to do this, even if I'm in a wheelchair and I can't even speak. I'll have a translator. We're going to continue to shape the world by having amazing guests come on, remove their armor to help you understand. All of us understand that there's about 8.5 billion humans on earth, research and we all have emotions and to think is a choice, unless you're insane. Keith pan cow, what's going on, man?

Keyth Pankau:

not much glad to be here, mario, so excited to be a guest on your show. I love the platform, love you. So glad samson, can't you introduce me, so we're really excited just to be a part of this.

Mario P. Fields:

Hey, love you too, my friend Everyone. Just a little bit about our guest who's on the show today. You know Keith has served many years in actually his career. His journey I don't say career, his journey started in the United States Navy and then he went to the Coast Guard. He's a retired officer from the United States Coast Guard. He served in combat. But officer from the United States Coast Guard, he served in combat. But here's what him and I were just talking about before the show.

Mario P. Fields:

Keith has supported and directly served in approximately 15, if not more, major humanitarian assistance to disaster relief, catastrophic events. His first one was Hurricane Katrina. What a way to start off. And man in the humanitarian space. And if anyone is watching or listening to this show and you lost a loved one in that natural disaster, or your, you know, your house, your livelihood was disrupted. I will continue to still pray for you because I know the brain does not have a delete button. He's also the host and producer of his own podcast. All right, and if you guys have not subscribed to his podcast, shame on you, shame on all of you. Get all there that all might be edified. Discussions on servant leadership is his podcast. He's a host and producer Again. Follow his show. Leave him some rating and reviews. I'm done. You're awesome. I got another podcaster on the show. Please continue to tell the listeners and viewers a little bit more about yourself, keith.

Keyth Pankau:

Well, like you said, I enlisted in the Navy and started out kind of a not really a normal Navy career. My first duty station was Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, california. So I don't know who I, how fortunate I was, who, who I was friends with, but somehow in that A school list nobody knew where Monterey was in California and I, somehow I got on the pick list. I was high enough, I was like, and smart enough to know well, california, I'm grabbing that and didn't know what Naval MPG was. But Naval postgraduate school, here I come. It was great, fantastic duty station and that's where I learned about the defense language Institute and so I did my first tour there.

Keyth Pankau:

Second tour, transferred to a Navy mobile construction battalion where I supported the Marine Corps there in Fallujah, iraq, and just really loved being with the CBs. But then I was pursuing a degree in middle Eastern studies and I was like, oh, I can finish my degree if they'll send me back to language school. So I didn't know anything about languages. As we, many of us in the military know, we get pigeonholed. We were like we talked to recruiter like hey, no, we get pigeonholed. We talked to a recruiter like hey, you'd be really good at this. You should do this and they kind of drive you in one direction unless you have a background or know some things, and that was my experience. Much more back to the middle east, after my iraq experience with the cbs as a farsi linguist and then got picked up as an officer in the coast guard, as a direct commission intel officer, and and then quickly learned that in the coast guard they expect we're a small, this coast guard's a small service, so they expect you to have many responsibilities, and so I started.

Keyth Pankau:

I grew up in a really kind of tumultuous, chaotic background and and having been in combat, I realized that disaster response, crisis management, was something I thrived in. I just love bringing order to chaos, and so I quickly started getting qualified in that and that's where I went and I stayed in that path ever since and I do that as a civil servant for the Coast Guard Now. I keep doing. I've stayed in the Gulf Coast, I've. I moved around a bunch. I spent a better part of my career on the Gulf Coast, but I've. I came to Louisiana after Katrina, I moved away, came back and then I've stayed here so and we retired here. So my daughter can pursue her own opportunities, which I think is what we're going to talk about today, but that's kind of mean in a nutshell.

Mario P. Fields:

We're going to jump into that, but listen to that transferable skill. I mean, if y'all didn't catch it, I'm going to say it again. Mario, I have a passion for bringing comfort in chaos. I'm comfortable in crisis. I mean, I don't know if your company or whomever is going to listen to this. Y'all need to give Keith a bonus or something. Give him a performance award.

Mario P. Fields:

How many people got that soft skill that are like the more crisis. Let me in and I tell you and I know you've done a lot of wonderful things for people who were in crisis, my friend.

Keyth Pankau:

Yeah, you know, and it's very rewarding and you start to learn that people's brains do shut off. Whether it's combat, humanitarian assistance, it doesn't matter. Everybody has a breaking point. We all do, and we're going to. We just hope we don't find it is the reality of the situation, because it's there, there's an off button in our brains. At some moment of trauma it's going to flip and we're going to like, and so we just hope we don't find what ours is. So we can all think, oh, that person, they, they, they cowered or they froze, but they just hit their off, switch their off moment. You know we, we all have it, we.

Keyth Pankau:

And so that's what I've learned doing this over many years is that I just don't want to get to the point where I find mine. So I keep building, you know, the skills I've learned to increase my resiliency to manage those things. My childhood helped me a lot. I've learned. As negative as it was, it helped me build a lot of those skills early on. But it doesn't mean that I'm necessarily better than anyone else. It just I've learned how to bring those skills to bear and I better than anyone else. It's just I've learned how to bring those skills to bear and I've learned to watch for those other things that are fracturing around me, or my off switch might be a little bit more exposed at the moment.

Mario P. Fields:

Yeah Well, let's metaphorically jump right into that. A man who is skilled at either one, turning opportunities in moments of crisis or two, intentionally avoiding a crisis. And, from my basic understanding, you're doing well in the Coast Guard, your officer. Everything is going smoothly. Now you got a decision point Do you stay in or do you retire? And and from my understanding is the one of the main decision points was based on a teenager, your daughter. I want to say that's, that was the focal point. Let's talk about that journey. And how did that happen? Because a lot of folks, real fast, keith, that's a critical moment. I have teenagers, I have a teenager. They're in school. What do I do? Over to you.

Keyth Pankau:

Yeah, let me set the stage, too, for a moment.

Keyth Pankau:

So you know it's 2022 is when I retired, so September 1st 2022 is my retirement date, just to give people some background. So 2020, I lead the 8th Coast Guard District's response to COVID. So I managed the movement of all of our major resources to make sure that we didn't hinder any of our partners needing supplies and resources so that we could continue to do search and rescue all of our critical needs, that they could be met but that we can continue to do search and rescue all of our critical needs, that they can be met, but that we didn't actually take away from, you know, first responders and do things like that. So we were actively looking at on a day-to-day basis, how many N95 masks do we have, who's used one or two and do we need to ship them around the country. We were at the speed of need, looking at, okay, how fast can we move things around so we don't take stuff from people that might need it for that critical response, and so that was one of the things I was doing and then.

Keyth Pankau:

So I did that for four months straight and then I got pulled away to assist with the, this massive Marine casualty, the golden ray. It was a we call a roll on, roll off a car carrier, um, with hondi globus and a bunch of other companies. It flipped on its side in saint simon island sound in georgia. So I get bringing. I got brought in as my pollution response expertise to do a whole as part of the marine investigation to look at some of the authorities on the pollution response and salvage piece. So I'm doing this simultaneously, while I'm doing a lot of things, I'm traveling back and forth and I'm doing this and then we roll into the busy hurricane season of 2020 where I responded to the six named storms. So that's kind of that 2020. And then I roll, I continue on and then you know, a year or I had a, we had a hurricane hit here in, here in Louisiana, and then I immediately get deployed to Mexico as a liaison to the Mexican Navy.

Mario P. Fields:

So, from my bait, you're not spending much time home, my friend.

Keyth Pankau:

No, I you know not a lot, and so and and I'm I'm high speed and that's been kind of like my whole career. So I but I. So in my last few years in the Coast Guard which is not normal I got a meritorious service medal, three Coast Guard accommodation medals, a joint service achievement medal, a Coast Guard achievement medal, a military outstanding volunteer medal, and that was just in my last tour, and so I don't say that to brag. I say that because I was on a climb. At this point in my career I was doing really good professionally. In my mind I was going where I wanted to go and doing the things I wanted to do. I really wanted to be a defense attache. I was an intelligence person, I had all this other experience. I wanted to make 0 really wanted to be a defense attache. That's, I was an intelligence person. I had all this other experience. I wanted to make 05, to go be a defense attache. That was my goal. That that's what I wanted to be. That was everything I strove for. I was building the plan. They sent me to Mexico. It was another notch in my belt to prepare for that. I was ready. That was me. So that's, I'm trying to set the stage here because I'm you know, I'm trying to set the stage here because I'm moving my plan's in place. You know, we all know that, right, it's moving.

Keyth Pankau:

Well, my daughter applies to the New Orleans Center of Creative Arts. It's a prestigious art school and she gets in for a part-time position and I'm here in Mexico working on a doctorate too, and so I'm talking with my wife and she's really like what do we do if she gets this opportunity? And I'm like, well, it's a pretty big deal. Do we just move her to some random high school If she gets this? It's a, it's a big thing. And I'm like I don't know that we do. I think you know she, and to give you a little background, our daughter had struggled when we were stationed in Alaska. She struggled in that school system and she started to lose her desire to learn, to be part of the education system and it continued to decline ever since then and she was continuing on that path of decline. Well, so she showed some initiative towards this.

Keyth Pankau:

So I was like, oh, this is pretty exciting. I don't know if I you know what we do with this, and so we're a pretty faith-filled family, so we were prayerful about it and we're pretty faith-filled family. So we were prayerful about it and we're like, well, let's see what happens to my wife Amazing woman that she is. I was like, well, let's just see what the Coast Guard offers you, let's see what the different decisions are, before we really make a decision.

Keyth Pankau:

And at the same token, at the same time not token, but I told my daughter, I said, hey, annabella, what I need you to do is I need to make you a good list of all the things that are beneficial about, you know, getting into this school, all the things that are beneficial about moving to another place, all the things that are negative about getting into this school, all the things that are negative about moving into a new place.

Keyth Pankau:

All these things. How to make this? I'm like, really, I want you to think it through, not not what you want, but all the things that could really help you. And we had a really good dialogue, we have a really good relationship, so I'm trying to help her and overlook the things she really wants, and so I'm communicating with this and then, about a week after I tell her this, it just dawns on me you know, I haven't done this, I didn't do this for me. You know, I have my plan and I see what could be beneficial to her, but I'm like I don't really think it through and so I'm like you know I need to do the work. If I'm asking her to do the work I need, to do the work.

Mario P. Fields:

Hey, Keith, would you like? So this is some world-class advice, Annabelle, I tell you you can't go wrong if you follow your dad's advice. All right, All right, I'll talk to you in a couple of days. Baby girl man, maybe I need to take my own advice.

Keyth Pankau:

That's exactly what happened. No-transcript. I have become a Coast Guard officer. That's my identity. That's who I am, and I don't know if I can be anything else. Wow. And then that's when I'm like, oh man, I really got to make some hard decisions. If this is the choice we're going to make, I'll do anything for my family, but that's that's when it really dawns on me. You know, this is who I am now. This is a part of me and I love it, and I love that too. Who I've become, you know it's. There's nothing about that that I didn't like. You know, there's things in the organization that I wanted to make better and all that stuff, but I loved being a coast guard officer. I loved everything about it and, um, man I was.

Keyth Pankau:

And then this thought came to me that the most important identity to me was that I was a child of god amen, and everything else was secondary and that's what I needed to focus on and that that helped me center and that really kind of took me down and helped me start to do different work at that point, and that's what I needed at that point on. And so my daughter not only got into the part-time spot, they offered her a full-time spot at the Northern Center of Creative Arts. Wow, the Coast Guard didn't make it too hard for us. They offered us a position that I wasn't, my family wasn't overly excited about in Corpus Christi, texas, which they were like well, it's just another move in the Gulf Coast. Nothing wrong with Corpus Christi, it's just there wasn't anything exotic about it. There wasn't. There wasn't anything they were going to learn or new experiences they were going to get.

Keyth Pankau:

We'd lived in the Gulf Coast before. The job was a job I was already completely qualified for, so it wasn't setting me up for more, it wasn't doing much more for me. So we're like, oh, this isn't you know. Okay, this looks like this is a pretty easy decision. Now, it's not really really that good for us. So we were like, all right, we talked about it. Okay, let's make the decision. Let's you know, I'm in Mexico. Let's make the decision. Let's you know I'm in mexico, let's retire, so everyone gets on board. I, I submit the letter before the actual assignment comes in, to get in front of the assignment process. Well then, you know, I'm doing the job for the international affairs office. Well, they immediately call me and they are like, hey, what if we sent you to bogota col, columbia, instead? And I'm like, well, that would have been a way better offer. And yeah, that's now we're. We're speaking my language here. So, and they start, really kind of I can't get any guarantees, but they start, you know, wheeling and dealing.

Mario P. Fields:

Can you give us your bank account? Can you give us?

Keyth Pankau:

you know, they even. They're even like well, we'd even let you retire potentially and go on retired recall. So all sorts of stuff. We're like, we love the work you're doing in Mexico. You've built some great partnerships Like what, what can we do? And so, and I had some hard conversations and then my wife she'd been nice up to that point she was like Keith, are these experiences that you need to have, or are these experiences you want to have? And she didn't say exactly like that, but that's the way I took it.

Keyth Pankau:

And I knew at that point we needed to give our daughter, it was our time to choose her over choosing my career, and that was tough for me. Then I went back to that, remembering that it was more about my identity and letting go of that identity as a coach.

Keyth Pankau:

It was time to shed that identity, shed that armor that I'd been hiding behind and trying to pick up a different identity, a different armor, and I'd learned something. And you talked about my bio and Fallujah and my time in Katrina. When I went to Fallujah, I had an amazing experience. Fallujah should have been awful and it was for a lot of people I there from in from 04 to 05 not a pleasant time to be in fallujah and I did convoy security not a pleasant type of work as well. But I had an amazing experience and a really a strong spiritual experience because I went in every day really centered on doing the work, having the positive attitude drawn closer to god and just being a good person and just uplifting and serving the people around me. And I was focused because I thought every day could be my last. So I was focused.

Keyth Pankau:

Fast forward to Katrina. I have orders to go to language school and my wife's seven months pregnant. She's miserable, she's almost bedridden. And I start focusing on me. Why am I going to Katrina? I'm supposed to. I'm supposed to PCS. Why do I have to go to Katrina and I deploy down there? These people need massive amounts of help, but I'm still focused on me. I'm you know, I sob story and I'm there helping and I'm going through the motions, but I don't get as much out of it because I was so focused on me. Well, those that lesson never left me, and so, when it came time to make the choice, I remembered it was time to not focus on me, to focus on my family, to focus on the other people I could help, because I can still do everything that I've been taught to do and help others. I don't have to be a Coast Guard officer to do that.

Mario P. Fields:

Yeah.

Keyth Pankau:

There's many different ways to do that.

Mario P. Fields:

And look at what you're doing now. I mean, you know it's amazing how God you know you've heard this kind of metaphor is. You have your plans and then God has his. You know, you're like I'm this Coast Guard officer and God's going. You peasant, that's going Go get me some. Go get me some orange juice and I want some decaf coffee because it's after one o'clock.

Mario P. Fields:

But, but, what an amazing opportunity to self-reflect. And you know, keith, that was a choice. And I'm glad that you came on this show because I believe, not just in the military but even in all professional circles, in all industries, that that unexpected choice will present itself, whatever that means. And sometimes, like you said, it's a choice to self-reflect and say what is my identity? Is it because I'm a ceo of a company or mid-level manager or just an entry-level employee, or am I? Am I keith pancow? I identify the rank. The rank doesn't identify me.

Mario P. Fields:

And it's amazing how it took annabelle in that, that external factor. And, of course, like, like, how to? You know? The opportunities start to present themselves and the man who's comfortable in crisis now self-reflecting, realizing I'm the one who's creating some crisis here. And that's powerful to be able to do that. I applaud you.

Mario P. Fields:

I don't have a special button man, I'm not. You know. I think think by 2025 I'll be able to have a budget where I can get that. You know we'll get 200 episodes, but I'm not gonna hold you too much because you know the deal. You know you're, you're just an amazing um person and I would stay on the show with you but before I let you go, my friend, looking back, looking back at that journey where you had to realize that this kind of this false identity that you have built your belief system around, in other words, you're more than a Coast Guard officer, you are an amazing human. Looking back at that whole journey, if you had to pick one thing that you learned and you could give our listeners and viewers, what would you give them?

Keyth Pankau:

Yeah, I think the thing I learned is to be ready to make the choice, to choose the people around you, because now I look at my daughter. We're getting ready to move her to the University of Hawaii Pacific or Hawaii Pacific University to study marine biology. She's all in, she's back on the train of wanting to pursue her dreams of education. When she was a little girl girl she wanted to study coral restoration. It took going back to the new orleans center of creative arts and going back to her creative writing to remember that she wanted to be a biologist. They reinvigorated her love of education there and I I didn't foresee that it was going to happen. I didn't think they were going to transform my daughter back into this girl that just loved learning and believed in herself. That's what they did more for her than anything I could ever appreciate is they taught her to believe in herself again.

Keyth Pankau:

And so the thing I learned is to pay attention to the opportunities that are being presented to you, because they're not going to look like what we have jotted down on a plan and, like you said, it's a choice. We have to choose to deviate from that plan to get those opportunities, cause those opportunities is that quote often says they're dressed in coveralls and they look like work. That's true, so we have to choose them, because they're not going to always be fun. And that word and, as my Navy and Coast Guard experiences, people would walk up to you and be I have an opportunity for you. Usually that means I got some work for you, but it really is an opportunity. It's an opportunity for you to get better, to grow, to learn and to achieve something more. But I think paying attention to those opportunities to do something for someone else is also important.

Mario P. Fields:

That is awesome and please give my regards to Admiral Pancow that's your wife for for going with it. Like you said, you, you, the way you process it for her to go, the hell are you doing and, and, and. You know the power of, of cause. You know you're just an old one, right? You know she's like an 010. She's a four-star admiral, but again, thank you to your wife. Tell Annabelle I said congratulations from the Fields family and again, if you're watching this, I've been smiling a lot. I have a permanent tan so you can't see me blushing. Just seeing the decisions, the decision you made and decisions you're making, seeing how meaningful it's been to you, and just imagining how happy Annabelle is and her passion. It's just beautiful and I hope there's others that listen and watch this episode be able to experience the same thing while we're on this earth. Love you, man, love the hell out of you. Thanks so much.

Mario P. Fields:

And thank you for your service. Everybody again get on his show. How can they find you? How can folks find you in the social media world?

Keyth Pankau:

Yeah, they can find me on Instagram. That all might be edified with some underscores in between the words they can find me on I'm on. The podcast is on all platforms Spotify, apple podcast, all the others that you can think of. There's a YouTube channel for it. Yeah, they can find me on all that stuff. There is an ex-account, although I don't use that as much. I think I'm not a big ex-person, but there is an ex-account too. If you're into that, I can beef that up as well.

Mario P. Fields:

Nice, you guys heard it. I will make sure all those links, my friend, are in the show notes. But everyone, until next time, may God continue to bless you, your family, your friends and every living being around you. Keith, be safe out there, man, and God bless you, brother.

Keyth Pankau:

God bless you.

Mario P. Fields:

Thank you for listening to this most recent episode and remember you can listen and watch all of the previous episodes on my YouTube channel. The best way to connect to me and all of my social media is follow me on the parade deck that is wwwparadecom, or you can click on the link in the show notes. I'll see you guys soon.

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