Today he hit his eight year mark in the Army, and today, halfway around the world he raised his right hand to re-enlist. Although he has done this in the past, this was the critical one for him and for our family. We had decided a long time ago (when we were both in still) that if either of us got to the ten year mark, we were staying in to retire. This contract renewal puts him over that ten year mark and solidifies at least another 12 years for him as a soldier and for us as an Army family.
I didn't know my husband when he joined the Army, I didn't meet him until about two years later when we were both almost a year into our first deployment. He had just been selected to move from the maintenance company to a flight company to start flying as a crew chief.
My first impression was that he was an arrogant, full of himself, know-it-all that was just one giant pain in my rear. This impression, come to find out, was much at the fault of one of his NCOs because he had been 'volun-told' he was going to featured for a short informational video on the MOS 15T. It would take a few months before I would get to know him to be any different than that. From that point on, it didn't take long for me to learn the hard-working person he was.
In the last six years that we have known each other, I've seen him promoted to Corporal, through pictures promoted to Sergeant and then promoted to Staff Sergeant. I've watched as he took junior soldiers and taught them the ins and outs of the aircraft as a senior crew chief. I've seen him take an aviation equipment shop that was handed over to him in shambles and get it completely prepared for a deployment, actually deploy it and bringing it back. He's successfully started up multiple remote sites in a deployed environment and been selected as a flight instructor. He finished as 'top dawg' in the ACSI (Standardization Instructor Course) and then completed the Advanced Leaders Course (ALC) as the distinguished honor grad. He's been the SI of his unit for over two years now and trained more soldiers than I can count. He's worked towards completing his degree. He studied for his flight aptitude test and completed his flight school packet and just found out he was selected to attend flight school. All of this in the midst of deployments and multiple TDYs. Not to mention that he spends every spare moment he has being an amazing father and a wonderful husband.
I know it's easy to be partial to our service members, because we are all proud of what they do. I've had an interesting insight in to my husband's work though since I have worked with him before. So I've actually had the chance to witness first hand, to learn first hand from him.
I find it even more amazing that as everyone is stressed out over the looming government shutdown, the possibility of our service members not getting paid, that he still raised his right hand. To know that to him, it's more than a paycheck, it's more than a job - it truly is something in his heart that he loves. Our boys and I couldn't be more proud of our soldier!!
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