The first Space Force ‘retirement beard’ is here and it’s incredible.
Roger A. Towberman, who until last September was the service’s first Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force, lived the Retired Dream this week when his former colleagues invited him back on base — the Pentagon, actually — for a ceremony in his honor and he showed up rocking an absolutely magnificent Not-My-Problem-Anymore beard.
The ceremony was the unveiling of his own clean-shaven official portrait in the Pentagon. Portraits are made at the Pentagon for service chiefs and senior enlisted advisors when they retire. With a decidedly out-of-regs haircut and the beard, Towberman and his portrait made a classic study in before-and-after retirement status.
In his official portrait, Towberman is pictured in his Space Force dress uniform, surrounded by items meant to reflect his time in service. Those include photos of his family and cat, a miniature replica of the Rosetta Stone — considered a pivotal relic in cryptology — and the book Moneyball, which chronicled the arrival of complex data analytics to the intelligence-like world of hunting for talent in big league baseball.
‘Retirement beards’ Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall unveiled the portrait with Towberman July 9. Towberman was sworn in as the U.S. Space Force’s second Guardian April 3, 2020. As the CMSSF, Towberman was helped develop the service’s core values, stood up the service’s recruiting and personnel policies and advised the service’s senior leaders on the welfare, readiness and morale. He spent the previous 30 years in the Air Force, including as the command senior enlisted leader at U.S. Space Command before switching to the Space Force.
“This is an incredible honor, and I’m so happy to be a part of it,” Towberman said. “Everything we did, we did to try to set the conditions for success.”
Even as a top enlisted leader, Towberman had a well-documented sense of fun. In 2022, he played along with an off-beat and even off-color interview with Stephen Colbert when the late night comedian brought his show to Thule, Greenland to profile the Space Force station there, arguably the most remote full-time assignment in the U.S. military. Towberman sat for a full, joke-filled interview with the comedian, absorbing jokes about “doing ‘it’ in space” and an Arctic-Circle-for-5th-graders line for the ages (9:00 on video) which Towberman reacts to with a huge laugh and calls “fantastic.”