I was born on April 28, 1976 in northern Kentucky. I grew up in a normal household like any other family, with the good times and bad times. I have two younger sisters. Becky (who is now married with two daughters), and Sarah (who just graduated HS). My father has always been my inspiration. He too is a Marine. He enlisted and served in Vietnam with 2nd BN 9th Marines as a scout sniper. He was is and always will be the epitome of the man I wish to be.

I would say by age 4 or 5, I pretty much knew what I was going to do with my life. I was going to join the Marine Corps. By my senior year of high school, it was very obvious. Everything from the way I talked to the t-shirts I wore.. I knew I was ready to go. I believe it was in November of 1994 that I went to MEPS in Columbus, OH and signed up. And then was acively involved in the Poolee Program with my local recruiters. You were only required to spend 1 saturday a month with them... I was there every single day. I would ride out to High School's with the recruiters, and help them get other youngsters like myself to join up. I even helped decorate the RSS with some USMC artwork.

I graduated HS in May of 1995. And guess who was there watching me graduate! That's right... my recruiter. His name was MSgt. Covington. I'll never forget the man. Tall, very slender and absolutely 100% motivating to be around. Unfortunately, shortly after my graduation he was given orders elsewhere and my new recruiter was now Sgt. Cordoba. Now he was a trip! It was not too long before that, he had come back from Somolia.. and he was telling us some stories from that when he was in his tank. He was pretty damn short, but very stocky and was fun to be around. There was also a Sgt. Fletcher, who eventually was promoted to SSgt. and sent back into the fleet... he was always a pretty quiet guy, but he had his humorous moments. And last but certainly not least, the man himself... GySgt Appler. If there's any other guy who reminds me of my father.. he would be that guy. Gunny Appler was a Marine, was discharged, and missed it so much, he went back into the Marine Corps a lil while later and these days he is a MSgt in Louisville, KY assisting with the recruiting effort in that region.

October came along, and my day had finally arrived. It was time for me to go meet the greatest of challenges I had ever faced. The day I shipped out, I remember all of my family there at the RSS.. and Gunny Appler stood out there with them. Sgt. Cordoba drove me and one of my closest friends up to Columbus. His name is Matt Losier. We grew up playing baseball together. He actually wanted to become a Navy Seal... BLEH! I talked him into joining the Corps with me! We spent a couple days up at MEPS and then we were on our way.

On the plane headed towards SC, their was an older gentleman who sat between me and Matt. He kept looking at us, and eventually asked me where we were headed. I told him we were headed to PI, and he got this huge grin on his face. He was a business man of some sort.. probably in his early 50's. As it turned out, he was a former Marine himself, and he shook our hands and wished us luck. Boy did we ever need it!

We arrived at that airport, and it seemed like all hell broke loose already. There was a Sergeant and a couple of Corporals there standing right damn smack in front of the entrance... already yelling at us to hussle up. They had us sit down, and made us either lower our heads or read the little green New Testament books they handed out. I think we all needed to read right about that time. We probably sat there for close to an hour, and finally we were sent somewhere else, where we ate chow real quick and then were told to put our faces on the table and close our eyes and either sleep or keep our mouthes shut. I think we were there for at least another hour. After that, they put us in a bus headed for Parris Island. The trip there seemed as though it took forever. The longer it took, the more anxiety grew in each of us.

And wouldn't luck have it... as we are driving down the street, in the dead of night, out of the darkness stands the meanest looking creature you had ever seen right in the middle of the road. The bus came to an abrupt halt, the door flew open and I cannot for the life of me remember all the words that came out of his mouth... but I know what I said... "Sir, yes sir!". We then found ourselves standing on the famous "Yellow Footprints" and it was from that point on my life changed forever.

Me and Matt were assigned to 3rd BN Lima Company, Follow Series, Plt 3052. What I didn't realize was that 3rd BN was isolated from the other BN's and we were pretty much SOL as far as anyone seeing us in agonizing pain in the "pit". Watching movies, I had always thought there was only 2 or 3 DI's... hell no, we had 5! Just my luck...

Every Marine remembers their own experiences from bootcamp, whether it be PI or SD.. their stories will be relatively the same. That's what bonds us together. We all go through that same initiation process. Myself, I have to brag a bit. My platoon was the best! We won everything there was to win including Final Drill. We did not let our DI's down.. and more importantly, we did not let ourselves down. I'll never forget the morning of Final Drill... Sgt. Ziola woke us up way early, and had us set up an indoor parade deck. We all stood at the position of attention, thinking, "Here we go again..." and this crazy SOB walks away, comes back 2 minutes later with a tape recorder, and the next thing we know we are drilling to some AC/DC song. I'm not sure if it was the AC/DC song, the threat that we'd go to the pit in our Alpha's, or all the long weeks of training... but either way, we won final drill! It was most certainly a great day.

We graduated December 29, 1995. Yep, not only were we officially of the USMC, but also the USMC club - U Suckers missed christmas! I went home, and spent my 10 days of leave in a blizzard. Didn't stop me from seeing my friends though. I made sure I went my rounds, so everyone could see that I did survive recruit training.

Then I went to Camp Geiger, and that's where me and Matt were split up... he was an 03, and I was an 01. So he went his way and I went mine. We kept in touch periodically. And on my birthday in 1996 I made my way to my duty station, MCB Quantico VA. I was assigned to Marine Corps Systems Command and worked in the CMCC. MarCorSysCom was quite different from what I had expected. Most of the Marines were officers, so naturally my right arm got tired quickly. On my deck alone, there was 5 former DI's working. So of course everything was spit n' shine, and the PT was always good. I made a lot of friends out there. I still keep in touch with the two Gunny's I use to work with. One is a MSgt now, and the other is a Company 1st Sgt.

Unfortunately, in June of 1996 I started having problems. I was running one saturday afternoon with a couple fellow Marines... just doing a 3 mile run and preparing for our PFT that was coming at the beginning of the next week. About 3/4 of the way through, my knees gave out on me and I fell down. My buddies were a few feet behind me, and they helped get me back up on my feet and asked me if I was ok. I shrugged it off, and thought it was just a fluke...and finished the run. But my knees were aching like I was an old man. They continued to ache throughout the weekend. Monday came, and we were out doing our PFT bright and early. I did my 20/80 like I had always done. My normal 3 mile run time was about 21 minutes...wasn't super fast, but certainly favorable. That day, I ran it in 28:08. Yep, I failed. I didn't know what the hell to think. I wasn't tired, my knees were just in a lot of pain. Well, the CO was not a happy camper. My CO was Maj. Bevan...and he certainly gave me an earful. He asked me why I did not go to medical, and I explained to him that I did not want to be looked on by the others as trying to flake my way out of a PFT. I told him I didn't think there was anything wrong with me.

Well, he didn't want to hear it, and sent me to medical. They tried telling me and the CO that I had a sprain and it would go away, but as it turned out, it did not go away. I was finally diagnosed with Patella Femoral Pain Syndrome in both of my knees and went through 6 months of rehab. For anyone who does not know, 6 months of light duty is the most demoralizing experience you could ever have in the Marine Corps (in my humble opinion). I couldn't run with my command or take a PFT. Hell, I couldn't even take a partial PFT. In September of 1997, they sent me to Bethesda Naval Hospital, and the doctors told me it was time to start looking for a new career, because the one I had now was over. I had mixed feelings about that. I was very bitter about the fact that I wasn't able to do the things Marines do, but I was also very sad that it had come to this. By November I was officially honorably discharged from the US Marine Corps (for medical reasons) and was back home in KY.

It was nice seeing my family again, but everything just seemed weird. Civilians were a weird species to me by then. And it took me a while to get use to being around them. I started working at the airport 3rd shift for a shipping company and stayed there for nearly 2 years. During that time I also started going to school in the morning, working on an Associates of Applied Science degree for Network Administration. I had finally decided I was going to go into the computer field. You can make great money, you can't fail a PFT, and your computer does not yell at you when you foul up.. it just doesn't do anything, which is probably worse.

After I left the airport I worked a few different computer related jobs. I was contracted by GE Capital IT Solutions for roughly 6 months as a Sales Representative. I worked one of the largest accounts on the west coast, which was Airtouch (now known as Verizon Wireless). Got me a nice cell phone out of that! Then I worked as printer technician for a little while for a west coast based company that had just recently opened up an east coast facility. I didn't care for the job too much, but I had several friends who worked there so it was nice to hang out with them during the day and make decent money at the same time.

Well, that ended up in a bad scenario that I won't get into, but anyhow... A friend of mine in Fort Dodge, Iowa informed me of him starting up his own internet company and offered me a position there as a web designer and network support specialist. I couldn't pass it up. Finally my break in the computer industry!

And that's where I am today. I've been here for almost 2 months now and I love it. I'm also trying to re-enlist and join the Marine Corps Reserves. Right now, there's a unit in Waterloo that I think I'd like to join. There's a lot of paperwork I have to go through, and I would have to get the "OK" from a doctor before anything could happen. There's no promises involved. But it would certainly be nice to have that second chance and to be able to fulfill my dream that I had kept ever since a little kid. And so the story continues...