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Why I served...



Where it all came from... no clue... Perhaps a prayer or two, or one hundred and two every night as I lay in bed as a child, wondering who I should be. And to always make the right decisions to do the right thing.

I wanted to be noble, honorable, fix things. You can't fix the world or all its problems.  But you can pitch in to make something somewhere better.

I wanted my mother to feel at peace and to feel empowered. Peace I could deliver by being my older brother's keeper, as she desired so. She lost her first two sons. All of it and the lack of proper caring for her made her quite an ill adult. One held in life's ever more fragile state, is where she was for nearly all her years.

Empowerment, she needed to see women were as strong as she thought she could be. That's if the cards had landed just right. And since they didn't, I had to show her I could shuffle mine.

I could not care to be traditional. Not be concerned what others threw my way, to take me off an uncharacteristic path. No one would pave my way. Nor pay my way. Yet, I would be compelled to think Globally.  

To know other people were worse off. For they lacked the freedoms I had, for the opportunity to choose. And that is much a part of the reason I entered the US Marines, signing the papers over 42 years ago.---Jody-Lynn Reicher 

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