A plumber for over 20 years and owner of United Mechanical Heating & Plumbing, Ed Sweeney knows a thing or two about getting the job done.

And that’s why he enlisted in the National Guard at the age of 38.

He says he did it for his son, Michael, who at the time had just graduated from Old Rochester Regional High School and wasn’t sure if he wanted to pursue college or the service.

“I told him, ‘Look, I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll show you what it’s like,’” Sweeney says. “And I’ve always wanted to join. The National Guard raised their age limit to 42, so I enlisted and passed all the tests.”

After Dad graduating from boot camp at the age of 39 in the top five of his platoon, Sweeney says Michael saw his father's pride and the reaction people had to seeing him in uniform.

“His eyes got real big,” Sweeney says. “He just told me, ‘I want that.’”

Michael joined the Air Force and is now stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in Valparaiso, Florida.

But back to the plumbing.

Earlier this month, Sweeney was sent to Tajikistan, a former Soviet country mashed between Afghanistan and China. His mission: Restructure the plumbing in a 50-year-old Russian building that was key to the area.

“Out of several thousand National Guardsman around the state, people were needed for an exercise over there,” Sweeney says. “They don’t have a system for natural disasters in that area. We’re getting countries like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan together to help each other with relief or water or health support. This was just part of that plan.”

Interestingly enough, his time spent in Tajikistan was during September 11 -- the country’s day of independence from the USSR.

“It was like the Fourth of July over there,” he says. “Parades, festivals and everything. The whole city shut down for four days.”

This made his mission a little more difficult.

“The United States Embassy gave us an interpreter to get parts and make them work. But it was very challenging, because of the parts not matching and the old piping. Pipes were broken in the walls, so I had to bust concrete. And I only had a couple of days to do it,” he explains and quickly adds: The experience was "awesome."

Sweeny is also a top-notch 9mm pistol shooter.

The son of a now-retired Wareham Sergeant and K-9 police officer, Sweeney says he’d grown up around guns but had never fired a 9mm before joining the Guard. That didn’t seem to matter, as he recently won a nationally ranked shooting contest using the gun.

“I beat out 60 other competitors,” he says. “I’m ranked in the top 15 in Massachusetts for the 9mm out of the Army National Guard and Air National Guard. But I never shot a 9mm until that tournament. I beat members of the military, infantry and even two Army Rangers.”

He qualified for regional tournaments but had to miss them to complete his mission in Tajikistan.

Sweeney says all of his decisions, whether it be joining the National Guard or getting his pilot’s license, could not have been possible without the support from his wife and kids.

“The mission goes first,” he says. “But family is first, too. I wanted to make sure my daughter, Alexis, had college. So this was a big thing was to show my family that I could do this and provide for them.”

Sweeney will be deploying to Afghanistan in August 2012.

He says everything he’s learned in life couldn’t have come from a book.

“It’s been very rewarding. The training, the schooling and the friends I’ve made—you can’t describe it. You can’t teach life experience.”