{"id":10859,"date":"2009-05-24T10:01:15","date_gmt":"2009-05-24T15:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=10859"},"modified":"2009-05-24T10:01:15","modified_gmt":"2009-05-24T15:01:15","slug":"my-two-favorite-cadets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=10859","title":{"rendered":"My two favorite cadets"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent two years of my Army career teaching ROTC at the University of Vermont from 1988 – 1990. After 14 years in the infantry, it was a great job, if it hadn’t been for the hippies, or crunchies (a reference to their tendency to consume granola), as we called them. I had two favorite cadets who I thought had the potential to do well in the Army, and like a good sergeant tends to do, I rode them relentlessly. But it looks like, despite my influences, they’ve both done well;<\/p>\n

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After his commissioning ceremony in May 1990, brand new LT Cross disappeared without saying good bye. I was disappointed.<\/p>\n

Weeks later, he showed up outside of my barracks at Advanced Camp in Fort Bragg and he hollered at me – “Hey, sergeant, are you going to salute me, or what?” Reluctantly, I saluted him. He returned the salute and handed me a silver dollar – the tradition is that a newly-minted LT has to give the first NCO to salute him a silver dollar. Cross had ducked out of the commissioning ceremony because he’d forgotten his silver dollar, and he’d ducked saluting any other NCO until he finally caught up with me. I still have that silver dollar, of course.<\/p>\n

My other favorite cadet was this woman, now LTC Nancy Jo Hubbard (Newell);
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Then-Cadet Newell commanded our Pershing Rifles drill team. Her father was a retired armor colonel and two of her three brothers were combat arms officers – one of whom is Colonel Peter Newell – David Bellavia’s battalion commander in the book “House to House”. I emailed with LTC Hubbard a few weeks ago, and in addition to commanding a battalion, she has two toddlers at home. That takes more leadership skill than anything I can teach her. I also still have LTC Hubbard’s silver dollar.<\/p>\n

I don’t labor under the misconception that as an ROTC instructor, I had much influence on them – during their careers, I’m sure they got much better guidance than I could provide from many more people. I just thought y’all’d like to meet some of the folks that are leading our Latest Greatest Generation of soldiers on this Memorial Day weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent two years of my Army career teaching ROTC at the University of Vermont from … My two favorite cadets<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-support-the-troops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}