My interest in serving in uniform began many years before I actually joined the Navy, and the interest wasn’t obvious at first. It grew and evolved over time. Looking back now, of course, it’s much easier to see how it all happened but it certainly wasn’t a conventional path.
My initial interest in the military began way back when I first arrived in D.C. and the city was recovering from the September 11th attacks. I started looking for ways to help the recovery efforts in some way. My church announced a volunteer opportunity to go to the Pentagon and serve food during the night to those cleaning up the debris and conducting investigations. I jumped at the chance to help and was put in the same group of food servers as another volunteer named Paul. He became a fast friend, and it was indirectly through him that my interest in the military started.
Like so many others in the country at that moment, Paul felt motivated to continue to provide some level of public service after 9/11. He directed his patriotism towards joining the Army. While I enjoyed serving in the Executive Office of the President at the time, I was also envious of Paul’s decision to serve in uniform. It felt nobler and more kick-butt-y. That was when the first seed was planted in my mind that would eventually grow into a plant of intention to join the military myself, but I had no idea at the time.
When Operation Iraqi Freedom began, I kept in touch with Paul via email while he was deployed to Baghdad. I loved hearing about his experiences, and I loved how fondly he talking about the bond he had with his “battle buddies,” the other service members deployed with him.
Hearing his stories made me want that type of experience, too. And staying in touch with Paul also made me want to contribute to the military in some way since I now had a personal connection to it. I got my first chance to do that when I heard through a friend about a volunteering opportunity to support service members in the D.C. area. Breadcrumb!
The volunteer event was with a group of political-types who met regularly at Walter Reed, the Army's flagship hospital at the time. The volunteers would visit once a month to bring some levity and comfort items to the wounded service members recovering there during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I immediately fell in love with both volunteering in general, and in serving the military and veteran community, specifically. I was being thrown destiny breadcrumbs in the shape of feelings. I didn’t expect to be drawn to the military community, but, now that I was, I intended to find more opportunities to be near it. I started volunteering more regularly at Walter Reed through the American Red Cross.
One thing I learned working at the Army hospital was the amazing grit and positivity of the patients there. The wounded service members remained polite, positive, and determined regardless of their circumstances. I started looking for even more ways to be around this military community I was seeing such strength of character in.
I found another veteran service organization to volunteer with, then another, then another, until I was engaging the military community in some fashion on a regular basis. It was during this time that I got more breadcrumbs thrown at me that would eventually lead me to put on the uniform. One by one, Paul’s new Army friends started getting stationed in D.C., and he began enlisting me to “take care of them.” That was another trait I noticed in service members: loyalty. No one got left behind; no one thought twice about bending over backwards for each other. I started falling more in love with the military community. The breadcrumbs were getting bigger, but I still hadn’t put it all together. I just continued taking actions to be near this new community to which I felt drawn.
Besides dedication, discipline, resilience, and loyalty, I saw another trait I loved in the service members around me: the ability of everyone to simply get the job done and not complain about it. They seemed not only willing, but capable. Having spent the first years of my career feeling like I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was naturally intrigued with these people who had training and were proficient in something. The only thing I likely felt proficient in at that time was how to create a really rad MySpace page. (You could change the background colors and have your page automatically play music. You could really express yourself back then. I took that seriously.)
The service members I was around could do things like perform first aid, change a tire, or build a performance stage. Granted, that last one isn’t often needed in day-to-day life, but it’s a specific thing I remember because of another breadcrumb moment I had with the military.
I dabbled in event planning for the President a couple years during the Bush Administration and there was one scene during my first event on a military base in Alaska that always stuck out to me. One night, the political appointees staffing the trip were discussing how we’d need to get a stage built for the President to stand on in front of the crowd. In our minds, we’d write up a contract and pay a vendor to build a stage like we always did.
The next morning, we came in to find a stage had already appeared. The service members had overheard us discuss the stage the day before and just built one themselves, overnight.
Or … sure … we could just ... do … that, I, and I assume the rest of the team thought, standing there in our suits, convinced of our own inabilities to create anything physically with our hands. I’ll never forgot the admiration I felt in that moment – I, too, wanted to be able to quietly solve something myself without asking for help. I, too, wanted to know how to build a stage just in case the President’s team ever showed up at my house and needed one. Obviously, you don’t need to join the armed forces to learn how to be more serving and self-sufficient, but that moment was another breadcrumb I would recall later that drew me to trying that armed forces thing out for myself.
For years I flirted with members of the military the idea of joining the military. (Ok, truth be told, I did both.) I often said I “would consider” joining or that “maybe that’s what I’ll do next,” but never with much conviction. I also just didn’t really know where to begin with getting into the military, so I didn’t really try.
I worked with veteran service organizations for several years, but I kept feeling like just being near the military community wasn’t enough. I secretly wanted to be a real member of it. I wanted to pass another service member, while wearing the uniform, and receive that look of recognition that would carry the unspoken bond of knowing we both knew what the word “latrine” meant. I wished I had joined the military like Paul had, but by that point in my life, I thought it was too late.
And that’s when I ran into my fellow Bush Administration alumnus Brendan at a networking event, and he informed me he had joined the Navy later in life through the Direct Commission Program. That’s when it all clicked. I could still do it. It wasn’t too late. There was an alternate route.
My journey through the Direct Commission Program is a story for another day, but my point here is: follow the inklings. That slight interest you might have in something might be a breadcrumb that will eventually lead to big things. Even if doesn’t, it might lead to something else, or introduce you to some awesome new people. Follow it and see what happens!
And please feel free to share your own breadcrumb moments in the comments or through my Contact page – I’d love to hear about them!
