Oglesby mayor uses his story, honest approach as Navy recruiter

Jason Curran returned late one night to Tent City in Camp Victory, Iraq, and saw a portable commode destroyed by enemy fire. Had he finished his shift on time and, well, tended to business as usual, his family would’ve gotten the dreaded telegram.

“I did very well recruiting for this area. I had no problem getting all kinds of people wanting to join the Navy.”

—  Jason Curran, Oglesby mayor and U.S. Navy (retired)

Curran, 49, is now Oglesby’s mayor and grateful to have made it out of Iraq in one piece. At the time, Curran dealt with the shock with dark humor. He got in the habit of carrying around, in his breast pocket, a $20 bill and a handwritten note that read:

If I’m found dead on the crapper, please take the $20 bill and make up a better story.

“So I did laugh it off, but it did bother me,” Curran recalled, “because I thought, ‘My God, I don’t want to die this way.’”

That sense of humor and a tell-it-like-is approach were among the reasons Curran was successful during his final assignment at the recruiting station in Peru Mall. He enjoyed meeting young men and women seeking direction and loved sharing why service to Uncle Sam had worked well for him.

“He was professional, squared away in uniform, and I believe he really enjoyed the Navy and the experiences he lived through,” said Phillip Hileman, general manager of Peru Mall, who came to know Curran during his time as a recruiter. “Jason has always been energetic, it’s just his nature.”

Curran enlisted in the U.S. Navy at 19, rose through the non-com ranks and finished his 20 years as a chief – and he’d do it all over again.

“There are tactics to sell the Navy on to people, but I didn’t really do any of that stuff,” Curran said. “I was honest with people and I told them about my life and my opportunities because I thought my story connected so well with people.

“I did very well recruiting for this area. I had no problem getting all kinds of people wanting to join the Navy.”

Growing up in Dubuque, Iowa, Jason Allan Curran had been a talented soccer player before a junior high knee injury impeded his athletic development. After finishing high school as an indifferent student, Curran stayed home an extra year accruing community college credits and working side jobs.

At the side jobs were coworkers with four-year degrees and still trying to break into salaried careers. That made Curran reevaluate the collegiate track and search for a viable plan B. He’d also spent spring break in Panama City, Florida, and fallen madly in love with the shore. A life at sea beckoned.

Curran enlisted in 1995 and never looked back. Boot camp, he said, wasn’t that hard; he arrived in good shape and his father had barked at him harder than any drill instructor. From the minute he set sail he loved everything about the Navy: the camaraderie, the challenges, the travel. He enjoyed fraternizing with comrades over beers, too.

“Best times in the world,” Curran said. “Work hard, play hard.”

And while he’d been an undisciplined student in high school, he was a natural test-taker in science and math classes and did well in his training as a nuclear technician. One day, after months into the third and final phase of nuclear training, he fell down a hatch and fractured two vertebrae onboard the converted submarine training ship.

Upon recovery, and fit for full duty again, he had a phone conversation with his master chief to discuss further nuclear training and future plans. By the time they hung up, Curran was transferred into cryptology as a communicator, or encoding and decoding messages.

Curran was at one point stationed in Washington, D.C., and visited the Pentagon to accompany a brief to the chief of naval operations. He was not, however, inside the Pentagon when it was crashed by a hijacked jetliner on Sept. 11, 2001.

Curran was sleeping after a midwatch and was awakened by telephone after the first terror attack. He switched on the TV and watched the subsequent attacks in horror. He soon was mobilized for action in case of additional attacks, and then assigned to Diego Garcia in support of the Global War on Terror – all within days.

A shake-up of a different sort took place about a year later on a return trip to Dubuque. A school chum asked him to be a groomsman at his wedding. In the bridal party was a fetching young woman who caught his eye. Kimberly and Jason Curran were married on Aug. 6, 2005. Kim brought with her a small daughter, Clara Rose, and they soon welcomed a son, Jason Jr.

Family life has agreed with Curran, though it also tempered his enjoyment of military service. No longer carefree and ready to venture off to remote corners of the globe, Curran’s career choices were abruptly dictated by housing, childcare and schools.

“My life was good, but my life took a different turn,” he said. “Now I was away from somebody. The Navy had become more of a job, but I was in for 13 more years.”

That included a few months in Iraq in 2004. He shies away from calling himself a combat veteran, but there were a few close shaves.

“I’ve never engaged the enemy – I’ve never returned fire,” he said. “But there were times when I was transitioning to the green zone and there was one time we were shot at.”

Before retiring in April 2015, Curran finished his post-secondary education. Through online courses, he earned an associate degree (nuclear technology) and a bachelor’s degree (technology management) from Excelsior University.

He later allocated his GI Bill education benefits to his children, but in a happy turn, Clara earned a full-ride scholarship and didn’t need his GI credits. Rather than waste them, Curran enrolled at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, to earn a master’s in public administration.

“I like to joke that my daughter put me through college,” said Curran, who proudly walked with Clara in the 2023 commencement at Drake, where she’d earned a law degree.

He would put the master’s to use at posts in Oglesby, where he and Kim found a house and a community they instantly loved.

Curran’s affection for Oglesby was evident to Jim Knoblauch, who at that time was president of the Oglesby school board. Curran was one of several individuals who applied for an appointment to the board and gave “a very good interview,” Knoblauch said, in which he showed a sincere concern for Oglesby children.

“Jason wanted to learn everything about how the school operated as soon as he could,” Knoblauch said. “He was full of questions and wanted to know how it all worked.

“You could tell Jason loved the city of Oglesby.”

Now retired and no longer recruiting, Curran is not shy about encouraging young people to try military service.

“It’s a noble profession and a noble cause because you’re not doing it for the money. Any time you put your life on the line, you have to know what you’re getting into. It’s a lot of fun in the very beginning but then it gets more serious the more senior you are and the more responsibilities you have.

“If you feel like you don’t have a lot of direction in your life and you’re fit and you’re intelligent, then go for it. Serve your country. Try to help out where you can. But if you’re going to make a career out of it, that’s where you’re going to have to make some hard decisions.”