I joined the United States Marines two weeks after my seventeenth birthday and a couple weeks before the start of my senior year. I joined because I wanted to escape my homelife as soon after graduation as possible. The Marines were my ticket. 

Between the August day I joined and the late May day I left for bootcamp I completed high school, experienced success in cross country, and, for the first time ever, thought college might be a possibility for me. 

I had never considered college before, and no one had suggested it. The military, however, was always at the forefront of my thinking, and when I enlisted, it seemed the only option. There is a long history of youth joining the military to escape family, poverty, trouble, you name it, so looking back, my enlisting made sense.

By October of my senior year, I began to have second thoughts though. I was still gung-ho about the Marines. I participated in a couple weekend sports activities with other Marine recruits. We were all seniors biding our time. Some would graduate in January and head off to bootcamp. The rest of us were waiting for May or June. 

With each cross-country individual victory, word of my running prowess spread. Universities and Colleges contacted me, first with congratulations and questions about my plans and then with offers to visit campuses. I ate it up. It was attention I never had nor expected. Suddenly, I was faced with two paths, the Marines or college.

A couple college cross country coaches and my high school coach told me I could get out of the Marines. Because of my age, I couldn’t be held to my commitment, they said, and the Marines knew it. One even said the recruiter had taken advantage of the fact I was only seventeen.

My Marine recruiter knew what was happening. He had come to a couple of my meets. He told me, sure, I could back out, if I wanted. That would not be a problem. He also said I could opt into the reserves, complete bootcamp, and return for college in the fall, doing my reservist obligations one weekend a month. I had no idea what to expect from college, so his offer sounded like the best of both worlds. If college didn’t work out, I still had the Marines.

My stepfather never liked the idea of college. The option to go into the reserves didn’t quill his displeasure. Surprisingly, my stepmom, for the first time ever, took my side. My stepdad backed off. 

With the new year, I still hadn’t applied to college. It took a college coach to come to my high school, sit me down, and watch me complete the application. He left with application in hand and my high school transcripts. A week later, he contacted me to say I was accepted. He invited me to visit campus for a day. 

It was only the second time I had been on a college campus. The first was a few week before I enlisted in the Marines when I went to Indiana Boys State at Indiana State University. I was amongst high schooler, so it couldn’t be classified a college experience. This second time I drove the twenty miles to campus, spent the day with some of the runners, met with a professor who taught pre-law (I had told the coach I was interested in being a lawyer because law was one of only a few careers for which I thought a college degree was needed.), ate in the cafeteria, and went to a basketball game. I drove home late that night sure I had made the right decision. 

My stepparents met me at the door. My stepmom asked how it was. Before I could tell her, my stepdad said, “I thought you were going to the Marines?” like the talk of college was completely new to him, like I had said I was done with the Marines. When I said I was going into the reserves, he snapped, “Yeah, well that’s bullshit. That’s nothing. This college shit—”

My stepmom cut him off. She said it was my decision. Then to appease him, she added, “He hasn’t even decided yet, so stop complaining.” She looked at me. She knew I had decided.

I was supposed to leave for bootcamp on May 25, 1979, the day American Airline Flight 191 crashed in suburban Chicago, killing everyone aboard and two people on the ground. My flight was cancelled. That night a bunch of us recruits holed up in an Indianapolis motel near the airport. To my surprise, two other recruits were guys I had competed against in high school cross country and track. We ran in the same conference. They had enlisted a few weeks earlier.

We left for San Diego the next morning. It was three days after I had graduated high school. I was still seventeen. 

For the first two weeks of bootcamp, I was sure I had made the worst mistake of my life. Slowly, then quickly, everything changed. The two guys I had run against for three years ended up being my closest platoon buddies. I turned eighteen a few weeks before completing bootcamp. I ran a sub seventeen-minute three miles in combat boots. The guy in second was over three minutes behind me. I became the recruit who could run, which gave me cachet and got me noticed by the platoon commanding officer. Half-way through the thirteen weeks, he came out during a field day to watch me run. 

We ran an out and back course along an eight-foot barb-wired fence that separated the Marine depot from the San Diego airport. It was a one and one-half mile rocky, cement rubble path pockmarked by knee-high weeds. After a mile, we turned left and went another half mile, the airport on our left on the way out and our right on the way back. We ran the course once a week. It was the only strenuous running I did in bootcamp. No one ever came close to me, and my best time was the day my commanding officer showed up.  

My running, rifle expertise, and test scores from myriad bootcamp classes got me recommended for Officer’s Candidate School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia. My platoon commander said he wanted to get his commander to recommend me for the Naval Academy, but I said no thanks. I had committed to my college coach, who had already done more for me than he had to. OCS was enough. It would let me keep my college commitment and still become a Marine officer.

Things change though. I went to officer’s school, but by the end of college my heart wasn’t in it anymore. Maybe the politics of the day soured me to it? Or maybe I had grown in a different direction and no longer saw myself as a Marine? Once a Marine, always a Marine is not a monicker others can apply to you. You must feel it. I no longer did.

I’ve wondered about the decisions I made during those years—enlisting at seventeen, deciding to go to college, opting for the reserves, turning down the chance to be a Marine officer, and others. There were no bad decisions, as a bad decision is one that impedes development or growth or hurts someone else. The decisions were life-forming, preparing me for the life I live now. It could have been different. It could always be different. The irony is we’re all making it up as we go and where it leads no one knows for sure. But you can count on it, it’s leading somewhere. Semper Fi