Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2008 > November > 28 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USDuty and honor never part-time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The end of a long and polarizing political year draws nigh. Tuesday’s runoff races for the U.S. Senate, a seat on the Georgia Court of Appeals and a seat on the Public Service Commission are all that remain. After that, the nation’s campaign season will have ended.
Through this much-too-long process, the group of Americans whose lives are most thoroughly affected by national election outcomes remain scrupulously uninvolved in partisan politics. Thanksgiving weekend is an appropriate occasion to give thanks to them and for them, and for the democracy their sacrifices preserve.
For three decades or more, this newspaper has participated with the Georgia Army National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve to honor six exceptional men and women in the enlisted ranks — three from the Guard and three from Georgia-based Reserve units. The honorees are selected by the Guard and Reserve from among three rank categories for their leadership abilities, duty performance and for conduct.
It’s an impressive and representative group. Those honored in the week before Thanksgiving included a group of volunteers you ought to know.
First Sgt. RICKY HALL SR. of Atlanta is a 31-year veteran of the Georgia Guard. Already, he’s pulled six tours of duty abroad — three in the Republic of Georgia, where he helped train Georgian soldiers headed to Iraq in logistics and in equipment maintenance, and three in Iraq, the last with Macon’s 48th Infantry Brigade. In civilian life, Hall runs a warehouse for Superior Printing in Atlanta. He’s been married for 31 years. He and wife Barbara are the parents of four children — two boys and two girls.
Six tours abroad are only possible, he said, “if you have an understanding second part of you, which is your spouse, and you have to keep her informed. You’ve got to have an understanding and strong counterpart; you can’t do it by yourself.”
Pfc. EUGENE RICHARDSON JR. of Smyrna wanted to marry his high school sweetheart, Nicole, and put down roots. So he chose the Army Reserve. The day after his required military training ended, he married Nicole.
For Richardson, the military is a family tradition.
“As a family, we were inspired by my grandfather’s military service; we wanted to follow somewhat in his footsteps. Me, personally, I felt as though the miliary would give me a better chance and a more secure life.”
His goal is to complete a business degree and own a company that provides heating, ventilation and air conditioning services.
Pfc. KEVIN D. GENTRY of Gaffney, S.C., is the first in his family to join the military, and family members have been incredibly supportive, he says. He plans to marry soon, and while he works now in the plumbing department at Lowe’s, his civilian career goal is to own a plumbing company. “That’s what I love to do.”
The military, he said, “helps to make me a better person; it has changed my whole way of life for the better.”
Sgt. 1st Class RICHARD M. COLVIN of Loganville is a high school history teacher and football coach in Walton County, and he has served two tours abroad as a reservist, the first in Bosnia with the Guard’s 48th Infantry Brigade in 2001. “Then 9/11 happened, and a friend and I started looking for a unit we knew would be activated pretty quickly, so we went to” the 310th Psychological Operations Company. In 2002, the unit was indeed called up and posted to Afghanistan.
He credits his wife, Carol, and their family, a supportive school system and other teachers for allowing him to continue to serve. His and Carol’s oldest son, Troy, now in college, intends to join the Marine Corps over the Christmas holidays.
Dad, who could retire from the service, intends to stay on, too. “I kind of want to pass the mantle to him, so to speak. I want to be in long enough for him to get in and get established.”
Staff Sgt. RACHEL J. DRYDEN of Columbus met her future husband, Capt. Christopher Dryden, at Fort Benning, where her Wisconsin National Guard unit had been deployed 13 years ago to replace a regular Army unit assigned to Bosnia. Now the two of them are preparing for duty in Afghanistan with the 48th Infantry Brigade.
Three years ago, they both served with the brigade in Iraq. Their military careers have prompted them to delay starting a family, “but we’re planning on that once we get back,” Dryden said. “That is an incentive to actually make it back. We’ll be there for a year — I hope just a year and that it won’t turn into a 15- or 16-month deployment.”
Sgt. TERRANCE R. ADAMS of Stone Mountain joined the Army Reserve while attending Georgia Southern University three years ago.
“It definitely has made me more responsible, more mature and has given me a sense of pride and self-confidence,” said Adams, an early achiever with an impressive list of military schools he’s attended.
“What I want to do is become a schoolteacher,” he said and, like Colvin, he’s convinced the military experience will help him. “It’s helped me determine where I want to go with my life.”
America’s strength is that while the rest of us debate issues such as how long to remain committed to a ground presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, reservists train, balance civilian careers and military obligations, prepare for deployments and still remain focused.
The republic’s resilence, as this election cycle demonstrates, is that it evolves and strengthens. Less than half a century after the civil rights movement, a man whose skin color was once a barrier to full participation in the American Dream was elected as the commander in chief, the president whose decisions will, literally, affect the lives of the men and women here.
It is a measure of the country’s greatness, too, that the two general officers who stood to honor the six soldiers would, half a century ago, have hit a glass ceiling long before earning a general’s star. And yet they are here, two of them.
Brig. Gen. Anne F. Macdonald is chief of staff of the U.S. Army Reserve Command at Fort McPherson. Brig. Gen. Maria L. Britt is commanding general of the Georgia Army National Guard in Atlanta. Both are West Point graduates — Macdonald in 1980 and Britt in 1983. America is, indeed, the land of opportunity, an open and evolving democracy where citizenship is something to be cherished.
To these men and women and to others in uniform who remained scrupulously above politics and focused on the job of preserving our freedoms, thanks.
Permalink | | Categories: Column
Services »