As the result of a chance meeting, a former Muskogee man and his son recently served together in Tbilisi, Georgia, a small mountainous country that borders Turkey and Russia, according to a media release.

Former Muskogee resident Army Reserve Col. Michael R. Considine of Pryor, and his active-duty son Army Capt. Patrick C. Considine, met and both served as American military ambassadors of goodwill during a cooperative exchange of ideas with the Georgian Armed Forces.

Michael Considine is a 1973 graduate of Muskogee High School. He graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1986. He is the son of Judith Snow of Muskogee.

Col. Considine served as the garrison commander for the exercise, and is regularly assigned to the 5045th Garrison Support Unit, Fort Sill. His son, Patrick, served as a company executive officer with Headquarters Company, Joint Multinational Readiness Center from Hohenfels, Germany. The two saw each other when they both traveled to Vaziani military base, located on the edge of the nation's capitol city, Tbilisi, to participate in “Immediate Response 08,” an exercise designed to improve understanding and strengthen regional cooperation, the release states.

“It is my responsibility to maintain all life-support capabilities here for the U.S. soldiers and civilians,” Considine said. “This included receiving more than 900 people, oversight of the dining facility, troop medical clinic and other services here, coordination of laundry services, allocation and maintenance of vehicles, morale, welfare and recreations programs, and force protection that was executed during combined training between American and Georgian MPs (military police).”

Patrick Considine is a 2001 graduate of Pryor High School and a 2005 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

“Our unit from Germany has been responsible for coaching, mentoring and training the Georgian brigade staff through battle drills they might encounter while deployed to Iraq. I'm responsible for ensuring our team's logistics are taken care of,” Patrick said.

American military personnel from stations in the U.S. and Europe, spent from a couple of weeks to a month at the Georgian base, living, eating, sharing military tactics, playing sports and holding ceremonies with the Georgian military, according to the media release.