Major changes: JROTC instructor helps shape cadets for life
On a crisp spring morning in early April, dozens of high school students from across the Coast are up early.
They’re playing games, but not in front of computer or phone screens. They are on an obstacle course of sorts, competing in the King of the Hill, a test of strength, endurance and agility spread across a field behind Harrison Central High School.
They are cadets from Junior ROTC programs from Petal, D’Iberville, Hancock, Biloxi, St. Martin, West Harrison and Harrison Central high schools.
At one station, cadets flip tractor tires. At another, they zigzag along a balance beam. At a third, they team up for a race with one cadet lying on a stretcher while four others carry it down the course. In between are pull-ups, sit-ups, jumping and running. Lots of running.
There is, despite the somewhat grueling nature of the activity on a Saturday morning, a lot of laughter and good-natured kidding. This is a rivalry that doesn’t get overheated.
But for the Harrison Central Army JROTC team, the competition was also the result of weeks of planning by its cadets leaders.
U.S. Army Maj. Nathan Jones (retired), has been the program’s senior Army instructor since 2005. The HCHS JROTC team started in 1983.
He was just in the right place at the right time, he said.
“My daughter lived down here and wanted us to move here because she lived here,” he said. “And I liked the area, so I applied and got the job.”
His family was from Arkansas and moved to north Mississippi from California when he retired from the military.
“She said it’s a lot more like California,” said Jones. “We found a good quality of life. Very liveable and exponentially less expense than California. And a very nice area.”
Jones had served in the Army Reserve, Army and National Guard, a “little bit of a pieced-together career” as he calls it, that included service with ROTC at the University of Washington.
And although he spent a good deal of his career in “management,” he’s not running JROTC as much as guiding it. He and 1st Sgt. Jon Smith insist the cadets do most of the work.
“We’re in the background watching, critiquing, evaluating, pulling them aside, talking to them about this or that, but we don’t want to steal their thunder,” Jones said. “We have a lot of people who shelter kids a lot.
“Too many parents, they keep an eye on them because they are afraid something will go wrong because it’s such a dangerous world that they over-control.
“What we teach them here is, you have responsibilities. You can’t just come in here and sit and wait for us.”
Students meet world
John Kunellis met Jones about 10 years ago when the JROTC was soliciting donations for a car-wash fundraiser in the strip mall where Kunellis has the Ice Cream Corner in Orange Grove. They struck up a friendship that has had a fringe benefit for the shop owner.
“I haven’t put a help-wanted sign out in years,” he said. “When I need employees, I just call up and ask (Jones) to send out any of the kids who need a job.”
Kunellis has been in the restaurant/bar business for decades and he’s had his share of disappointing employees, including some who had to be taught the finer points of mopping a floor.
Not anymore.
“These ROTC kids have qualities that aren’t in the general population,” he said. “They are generally more disciplined. They’re generally more respectful. They’re generally more responsive to supervision. They’re generally more task-oriented.”
He said when Jones sends him an ROTC student it’s a done deal: No interview or background check is necessary.
His current group of employees has been with him six years.
“I have none of the turnover of fast-food restaurants,” he said. “I treat them with respect. The deal is, if you respect this job, I’ll respect you.”
And, the pay is better.
“They’re trusted with the store,” he said. “They’re trusted with the keys. They’re trusted with the cash register.”
The JROTC has done the heavy lifting for him.
“The ROTC takes these kids when they’re 14 or 15 years old and (Jones) teaches them how to be responsible and how to be better citizens. And that teaching, the experience they get from him, is reflected in their citizenship on the job over and over again.”
‘Facilitators of learning’
JROTC is unlike any other set of classes at Harrison Central.
“Our job here is not to be teachers in the traditional sense of the word,” Jones said. “Our job is to create a learning environment wherein the kids can learn as much from each other as they learn from us. We’re supposed to be the facilitators of learning.”
It’s a very military-like operation, but Jones said it doesn’t necessarily lead to a military career.
“We teach them very much that when you get out into the working world, nobody is going to make you do things,” he said. “They’re going to give you inspiration, they’re going to give you motivation, they’re going to give you opportunity.
“But you better take the bull by the horns and do it because if you are waiting around for someone to make you do something, you are going to be outdone by all those who are jumping in. The first time the boss detects that he has to make you do something, the first thing he’s going to do is make you leave the property and (he’ll) hire the guy who has the initiative.”
Success stories
Some cadets do join the military. Gentry Seely, for example, went into the Marines.
Seely’s parents were Seabees and he always wanted to be in the military. Jones, he said, was a major influence.
“We would go out to eat and he’d counsel me for hours,” Seely said. “He’s like a father to me. Every time I go home, I have to see him.”
Not longer after Seely joined the Marines, he was in military police school when a group of Marines came seeking candidates for a special assignment. Seely was one of four chosen.
From 2012 to 2016, Seely was one of the Marines guarding “the helicopter,” one of the most sought-after assignments in the Marine Corps.
“I am the guy saluting the president,” he said, referring to photographs most Americans have seen of then–President Barack Obama saluting Marines as he stepped off Marine One , the president’s helicopter.
Still Seely kept in touch with Jones for advice.
“He’s an amazing guy,” he said. “Many former cadets come see him whenever they’re in town.”
Seely is out of the Marines now and in junior college in Virginia. He hopes to finish his degree at George Mason University on the GI Bill.
After that, a government job is one option.
“I’m trying to decide if I want to go back in (the Marines) or go to the government,” he said.
Another reason to join
Not everyone who joins JROTC is gung-ho about the military.
“At first I wasn’t that interested,” Emily Herzel of Saucier said. “I joined to get out of (physical education classes).”
Jones changed that attitude, she said.
“The major talked to me about what I could do,” she said. “He had me take on more and more responsibilities.
“In the JROTC, you have more support. You have this family that cares.”
Now, Herzel, a student at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, is talking to the Air Force about a career in the medical field.
Events such as King of the Hill and the Cadet Challenge physical fitness test helped her develop a competitive spirit she said she’ll need to get into that program.
“It was so much fun,” she said. “Junior ROTC makes you competitive.”
Jones, she said, gave her the push, and the pushups, she needed.
“Major was always there with his motivational speeches — that last two hours,” she laughed. “I love Major. But sometimes I thought I would be doing pushups forever.
“When I started, I thought the ROTC was not for me. Now it seems the military wouldn’t be so bad. The ROTC was a good stepping stone.”
Difference four years make
There is a marked difference between freshman-year and senior-year cadets. The first-year cadets are reticent, the fourth-year, far more confident.
Capt. Samantha Sanchez of Gulfport is Bravo Company commander, a position that puts her in charge of 26 cadets, most of them freshmen. She remembers well her transformation.
“When I was in ninth grade, when I entered, my attitude was bad,” she said. “If leaders would tell me something, I would get an attitude, or respond in a bad way, talk back. I was lazy, too.”
Now, her grades and her attitude have improved. And she’s one of those giving orders in a command staff that is all female.
She plans to sign on with the Army before school ends and may pursue a job in the medical field.
“I’m excited,” she said. “I’m sad because I’m leaving high school and the Junior ROTC, but my goal is to join the Army.”
At the JROTC headquarters in a building behind the high school, similar stories are told. Many are cadets who moved to the Coast and found a group of like-minded teens in JROTC.
Michael Favre is one of the first-year cadets.
“I wasn’t really a good cadet but I’m pushing to better myself,” he said. “It motivates me to keep pushing to become a better person. It teaches me leadership, discipline and how to motivate someone.”
Quyen Dong was the medic on duty at Harrison Central during the competition. A few years earlier, she was battalion commander and a lieutenant colonel in JROTC. She’s now a National Guard medic and a student at the University of Southern Mississippi. She’s considering enlisting as an officer in the Air Force after college.
“One of the kids here wanted to be a medic, too, so I’ve been enlightening him,” she said. “I’m telling him what I see, give him that point of view, to help him plan his future.
“I’m big on planning my future. So I know a lot about the stages you’ll go through if you want to join the military, if you just want four years of college or if you just want a take a break between high school and the military or college. I’ve done it all, just about.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2017 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Major changes: JROTC instructor helps shape cadets for life."