Road Less Traveled: GHS Teen Choses the Life of a Marine
Road Less Traveled: GHS Teen Choses
the Life of a Marine
September 22, 2006
by Keach Hagey
It was on a clear, crisp day in September five years ago that Julio Jaramillo Jr. made the decision that led to his leaving for boot camp this weekend.
He was an eighth-grader at Western Middle School, and saw the images of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks on television.
"I was in social studies class," he said. "Seeing all those people falling from the building really stuck in my mind. I've wanted to be in the military ever since then."
Jaramillo, 18, followed through on this desire last December, when he became the only member of Greenwich High School's Class of 2006 to enlist in the Marine Corps. Now, as he prepares to leave on Sunday for three months of boot camp in Parris Island, S.C., his family faces the moment with pride and trepidation.
For his father, Julio Jaramillo Sr., having a Marine for a son is the realization of a dream he's held since his childhood in Colombia. When a heart condition made him ineligible, he transferred his dreams to his son, who was born in Venezuela, where he met his wife, Maribel.
"Always, my dream is, when I have my first kid, he has to go into the military," he said. "But I want him to go into the military in the United States."
This aspect of the dream was made possible a few years later, when Jaramillo Sr. immigrated to Greenwich in 1993, bringing the rest of his family with him in 1996.
But Maribel Jaramillo is worried.
"I am very sad because at this moment the situation in the war is very bad," she said. "I pray every night that he will have the opportunity to stay in the U.S. and not go to Iraq for the war."
He knows it bothers his mother, but Jaramillo said he isn't scared of getting sent to war.
"I honestly wouldn't mind going out there," he said. "I guess that's because I'm young and I haven't experienced it over there. But I want to be a Marine. Whatever they tell me to do, I must do."
He did recently hear some unsettling reports from a soldier who had recently returned from Iraq.
"He said you really don't know what's going on over there," he said. "You'll be giving food to people, and one minute they'll be your friend, and the next minute they'll be planting bombs."
But in general, he said he tries to keep his knowledge of what is going on in Iraq to a minimum. "I don't like to read. I don't like to watch the news. I just want to focus on what's next," he said.
That includes three months of boot camp, where he has been instructed to arrive with nothing but the clothes on his back, his driver's license and $20 in cash. After a 10-day break following this initial training, he will then have a four-year enlistment, followed by four years of reserve status.
Although they'd heard him talk about enlisting, many of his friends and teachers were shocked when he actually followed through, he said. Greenwich High School has a very low rate of Marine Corps enlistment, with only two people signing up in the last two years, according to recruiters, who strive to get about two percent of a high school's senior class to enlist.
"That's one of our lower propensity-to-join areas," said Capt. Michael Beckhart, executive officer at the Recruiting Station Springfield, which covers western New England.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan haven't had a big effect on recruitment, he added.
"In recent years, the propensity to join hasn't changed," he said. "The questions have changed."
Families ask a lot of questions about the dangers in the war in Iraq, but eventually, recruiters try to get them to understand that "it's just as dangerous a lot of times going out for a drive as it is being in the service."
The benefits far outweigh the dangers, in Jaramillo's mind. He said he was never big on school, and knows the Marine Corps will open doors. The day he drove up to Massachusetts to enlist, he came back to his home in Riverside feeling different, he said.
"I felt like I was part of something," he said. "I felt like I had accomplished something. I felt proud."
He also feels proud of a more recent accomplishment: losing 30 pounds in 21 days to get under the Marines' weight maximum. He was originally scheduled to leave for boot camp at the end of August, but at that point weighed 252 pounds. He credits the help of his two close friends, Fernando Signorelli and Frank Perelli, both 18, with helping him run three miles and work out at the YMCA every day to get under the weight requirement. "They were really there for me," he said.
Now, he is proud that he can be there for his country.
"The United States has given me so much - an education, and so much opportunity," he said. "I feel like I owe them something. I need to give back."