Diplomat Mark Lenzi: Home to Heal

DURHAM, N.H. – Mark Lenzi needed to find a place to recover.

A native of nearby Barrington, a 1997 civil engineering graduate of the University of New Hampshire and former member of the Wildcat track & field team, Lenzi was medically evacuated last spring from his post as a Security Engineering Officer at the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China and was in tough shape with a brain injury.

He headed home. Back to the Seacoast. Back to UNH. Back to coach Jim Boulanger's track & field program, based out of the Paul Sweet Oval in the Field House. Back to family and back to his now-extended Wildcat family that includes director of athletics Marty Scarano and sports performance coach Tim Churchard and the school's football program, too.

"It has been a lifechanging experience, honestly, for me," Lenzi said, sitting beside the indoor track one morning last month. "It hasn't been the only reason I've made it through this recovery, but it's played a significant role in it, my relationship with Coach B and Tim and UNH athletics."

Lenzi told his story of intrigue and espionage, of how he, his families and colleagues in the state department sustained serious injuries from what he calls enemy "radio frequency weapons" while they were stationed in China, to Scott Pelley on the CBS investigative television show "60 Minutes" on Sunday night, March 17.

Another piece of the story, untold on "60 Minutes," is how Lenzi has returned to his roots in the last year and leaned on his UNH background and ties to rehabilitate through an assortment of therapies and battle back from concussion symptoms and rebuild his life.

It's been a rebuild that started with a visit to Boulanger to reconnect, which led to a relationship with Churchard and the football team, among others in the Field House.

It included invitations from Scarano to accompany the UNH football team on return trips from games last fall at the University of Colorado and Villanova.

Scarano set Lenzi up with a visitor bracelet for the sidelines for the game against Colorado in September at historic Folsom Field and that gave a boost to his recovery, too.

"That wrist band, I kept that on for months afterwards to look down at," Lenzi said. "It was such a great football environment, having 40-50,000 people cheering for Colorado, but cheering against UNH. The players love that. They love being in that sort of environment."

It was a gift that kept on giving.

"I kept that on my wrist when I was going through these therapies, when I was doing all that hard work and I'd look down at it," Lenzi said. "I liked UNH's attitude when they went out to Boulder. We want this challenge. Bring on this challenge. These people are all against us. I can't tell you how many times I looked down at that wristband - it sounds simplistic, that visitor sideline pass – and thought: 'Just get through this therapy, embrace this as a challenge, embrace this as another thing you've got to get through. You thought it was hard at the time when you were at UNH, doing engineering and trying to run? This is something you'll look back on it and it'll make you a better person.'"

He held on to the wristband as a memento.

"Finally the thing got so ratty it fell off," Lenzi said. "But I still have it. I kept it. It's that sort of thing that UNH has done for me that I'll never forget and has meant a lot to me in my recovery."

Lenzi was at the University of Pennsylvania for treatment in October and Scarano invited him to come to the Villanova game and again fly back with the team.

"I can't tell you how much that meant to me, emotionally and spiritually," Lenzi said. "I had to do two MRIs that week and I had to do all these other treatments and stuff that just really hurts. To be able to, you know, just stick this out a couple more days, and know you're going to be on the field at Villanova with the team. And then flying back with them and being around that team and around that energy and being around these young men, these warriors. Again, I can't express it in words."

Lenzi, in turn, has had an impact on UNH and the athletic department in particular.

"Mark is an inspiration for us, a reality check," Scarano said. "His selfless and courageous journey should be a lesson to all of us: Freedom isn't free! We can't do enough for him as far as I'm concerned. For him and all who guard us, thank you doesn't do justice. This was an opportunity for us to extend our appreciation."

The UNH connections and relationships fostered out of a Lenzi visit to see Boulanger last summer. The coach wasn't in the office the first time he stopped by, but a quote posted on his door caught Lenzi's eye. The closing words of the quote: "A greater-than-self purpose not only makes the world a better place, it makes you a better you."

"That note," Lenzi said. "That's why I joined the John McCain campaign. McCain always said that the best thing in life that you can do is serve a cause greater than you. That's what I've tried to live my life by. That's what Coach B, that's what Tim has lived his life by."

Boulanger's older brother, John, was in charge of state department security during his career and was assigned to some of the same danger-filled places Lenzi had been and that helped the coach and his former athlete connect as well.

One ironic piece of the story is that Lenzi was thrilled about running for Boulanger and UNH track & field after he came out of St. Thomas High School in Dover, N.H., but his plans went awry after a little more than a season.

The academic demands of the engineering program, combined with training and competing for a Division I program, proved to be too much.

Lenzi went to meet the coach and hoped Boulanger would tell him he should switch to an easier major and keep running.

"My message was, this is what you have to do," Boulanger said. "You've got to step away. The program has always been about academics first and then athletics. That's the key. Get your degree."

Lenzi reluctantly left the team and went on to get his degree in civil engineering with minors in political science, hydrology and water resource management and climbed from struggling academically to earning a Fulbright scholarship.

He spent a couple of years in the Peace Corps as an environmental engineer in Poland, worked as a spokesman on McCain's campaign in 2007 and 2008 and then as spokesman for the Republican Party of New Hampshire. Since 2011, he has been with the US Foreign Service as a Security Engineering Officer for the Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service and has been to more than 70 countries and has worked in all 15 former Soviet Republics, including in various dangerous assignments.

Lenzi said he is mostly recovered now and he works for Diplomatic Security out of Pease now while he rehabs and looks forward to the time that his medical clearance, presently allowing him to work domestically, improves to where he can go overseas and get back to work internationally, perhaps in Germany.

"That's what I do," Lenzi said. "That's what I'm good at. That's what really gets me motivated to get up in the morning to do these things, do these technical counter intelligence things that I do."

He'd also like to develop, with the assistance of his contacts, a UNH-affiliated nonprofit organization – the McCain center for Intelligence he wants to call it – that would assist engineering students in getting either dual majors in political science, language or similar subjects.

"I think that would be a great thing for not only UNH, but a great thing for national security structures and the US government at large to have these types of people," Lenzi said. "I think it would be a really neat thing that UNH could derive benefit out of and also give benefit to the US government."

In the meantime, he'll continue his New Hampshire-based rehab. He'll run on the track at UNH and keep up his conversations with Jim Boulanger and Tim Churchard and the rest of the athletics department family.

"He's not only easy to talk to and listen to, but he's fun," Churchard said. "He's got terrific insight into the world and people. He loves people. He still sees his old friends. All of that gives him a lot of strength. I can't imagine some of the stuff he went through, some of the stuff he told me. It's a good thing there are people like that."

It's been a good fit.

"He doesn't forget where he comes from," Churchard said. "UNH is where he wanted to come to assist his rehab. You don't get any better people than Jim Boulanger. Marty welcomed him here. This place puts its arms around people and helps them grow."

Lenzi brought in circuit workouts from nearly 30 years ago that Boulanger had given him back then.

"I told him I still have those circuits in the drawer," Boulanger said. "Home is always a good place, isn't it?"

Lenzi swears by it.

He dreamed of it, longed for it, when the going was the toughest.

"I was going through a rough time with this, especially right after the injury happened and the headaches were so bad," Lenzi said. "Twice I thought I was going to die from these headaches. Nothing focuses the mind like if you think you're going to die, right? . . . It was kind of going through the back of my mind, things that are familiar to me and things I need to get back to. I need to get back to Barrington and see my family. I need to get back to UNH and see Coach. Get back here on the track. Get back to things that are familiar to me and that I want to see again."

He made it back to UNH. Back to the track, just steps away from a plaque that reminds him of what the place has meant to him through the years.

A board commemorating those who donated to a track renovation project in 2008 is on a wall on the entrance to the track and includes this listing: Mark D. Lenzi, '97 and Kristina Lenzi.

"I pass my name and my wife's name there on the way to work out," Lenzi said. "After I work out, I kind of glance over and look at the board. It's a neat feeling."

He's come a long way home.

Allen Lessels
@UNHInsider
Allen.Lessels@unh.edu

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