General Interest - Marine Corps Association

Carolina Museum of the Marine

Building a Firm Foundation for the Future

By Ashley Danielson

The mission of Carolina Museum of the Marine | Al Gray Civic Institute is to honor the legacy of Carolina Marines and Sailors, sustain the ideals that are the foundation of our nation, and inspire principle-committed citizens.

Originally named Marine Corps Museum of the Carolinas, the organization was founded by Major General Ray Smith, USMC (Ret) who was the commanding general for Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune from 1997 to 1999. Smith and his wife, Colleen, wanted to preserve the storied legacy of Carolina Marines and Sailors so they contacted Sergeant Major Joe Houle just before his own retirement. “We wanted someone who understands the Carolina MAGTF,” MajGen Smith said. “And someone who would work tirelessly to make the vision of an enduring tribute a reality,” he added.

Houle joined the organization in 2000, wearing a number of hats over the years, all with the focus of building the museum. Now as Director of Operations and Artifacts, Houle works with Ashley Danielson, the Executive Director and Vice President of Development, and Richard Koeckert, the Finance Manager, overseeing the organization while a search for a chief executive officer is underway.

“Over the years we have been collecting artifacts for the museum’s exhibits,” Houle said. “Board members CWO-5 Lisa Potts, USMC (Ret) and SgtMaj Ray Mackey, USMC (Ret) have worked tirelessly with the organization’s historian, LtCol Lynn “Kim” Kimball, USMC (Ret), and museum archivist and volunteer Frances Hayden to ensure best practices in the accession and care of the artifacts,” he added.

Late in 2021, the state of North Carolina awarded $26 million to the organization for construction of the 40,000-square-foot facility. Local government entities are joining private donors to ensure that the organization has operating capital to oversee and run the project during construction and after its doors open. “We are excited to see this organization moving from grassroots to the national stage,” said Danielson. “We have numerous faithful supporters to which we owe a debt of gratitude.”

The Museum

The museum will include displays featuring Expeditionary Warfare and Amphibious Operations, Carolina MAGTF (Marine air-ground task force) Development of Maneuver Warfare Philosophy, Women Marines, Montford Point Marines, MARSOC (Marine Forces, Special Operations Command), Military Working Dogs, and Wounded Warrior Barracks among other firsts and innovations of the Carolinas. “We are honoring Marines and Sailors, and their families, whose service to the nation exemplifies civic commitment in action,” said Chairman of the Board, Brigadier General Richard F. Vercauteren, USMC (Ret).

The museum will highlight the many ac-complishments and innovations of Carolina Marines and Sailors and the enduring contributions of their host communities. It will also provide a unique and inspiring new venue for public and private events including military balls, reunions, promotion and retirement ceremonies, weddings and civic events.

The museum’s plans have stayed the course since 2000 with award-winning architectural and engineering plans already in place. “We are building in two phases,” Vercauteren said. “Phase One, Reflection and Celebration Park, was opened to the public in May 2016 and gifted to the Department of the Navy in 2018.” According to Onslow County Assistant Manager Glenn Hargett, Reflection and Celebration Park is the most “Instagrammed” site in the community. Hundreds of people—military personnel and civilians—use the park and its world’s largest eagle, globe and anchor statue as the site of promotion and retirement ceremonies, weddings and photo opportunities. Recently, thanks to gifts from Byrd Family Foundation, Patriots Walkway was dedicated at the site.

“Plans for Phase 2, the construction of the 40,000-square-foot Museum and Institute, are now underway,” Vercauteren said, adding that a Marine veteran legislator was instrumental in backing the project. “Thanks to dedicated North Carolina Senator Mike Lazzara and his success in obtaining a $26 million construction grant this year.” Lazzara was joined in his efforts by North Carolina state representatives George Cleveland, Pat McElfraft and Phil Shepard.

“We are excited to move forward with this project,” said SgtMaj Houle. “We will show quite clearly, with our immersive exhibits, the honor, courage and commitment of Carolina Marines and Sailors.” The museum will be located near Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune and is anticipated to be a major attraction for the 138,000 Marines, Sailors and Coast Guardsmen serving in the area as well as their families and friends. Houle also expects numerous military and history aficionados as well as tourists to the state’s coastline to visit the museum.

Headwinds

As with any project, the group has encountered headwinds and obstacles along the way, including very real questions about the efficacy of museums in the current milieu. “We knew we needed to look at our business model,” said Danielson. To do that, the group began talking to other museum leaders about what does and does not work. Danielson said that one of the most compelling conversations early in her tenure with the organization was with General Alfred M. Gray, USMC (Ret), the 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps.

“We spoke about the need to increase or even restore civics education in our nation,” she recalled. “General Gray has had in mind for a number of years an institute at which individuals of all ages can learn about the foundation of our nation, the core values of our founding fathers, and the principles of creative, critical, and strategic thinking that will lead to effective civic engagement.” The synergy between the core values of the Marine Corps and the characteristics of a good citizen made sense to the group, and plans began to create and launch the civic institute, now named for its founder, General Gray. The Al Gray Civic Institute will offer courses on site, online and on location.

The Institute

Since 1775, the United States Marine Corps has been integral to the security of our country, and integral to its mission are honor, courage and commitment. Marines are inculcated with an understanding of honor and the qualities that define not just a well-formed Marine but a well-formed person and citizen. “Marines demonstrate civic commitment in action as they defend and protect our Constitution,” said General Gray. “We want to showcase their many innovations and accomplishments while teaching to students young and old a basic knowledge and understanding of our government and our individual responsibilities in preserving our democracy for future generations,” he continued.

With Gen Gray’s leadership, Board of Directors Vice Chair Mark Cramer, and ethics professor James Danielson, are overseeing development of the curriculum for the Al Gray Civic Institute. “Critical Thinking for Civic Engagement,” the Institute’s first offering, has been delivered at Swansboro High School in Swansboro, N.C. and at Camp Johnson to active-duty Marines awaiting MOS training. The 15-hour course is being adapted for online presentation as well. Other classes under development include, “The Founding Principles of the United States,” “Understanding the American Constitution,” “Critical Thinking for Civic Engagement,” “Leading Self, Leading Others,” “History of Political and Economic Thought” and “Ethics at Home, School and Work.” “The Houle School” is a summer fitness, civics and leadership program for middle and high school students. The Institute also produces essays in the organization’s monthly newsletter, “Front and Center.”

Gen Gray is especially interested in teaching critical thinking which he defines as the study and analysis of problems, issues and facts to develop and form a sound judgement. “It is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-motivated, and self-corrected thinking,” he said. “This course was already conducted at Swansboro High School in 2019 with excellent results. We want to be prepared to defend our convictions and interests as well as our institutions.” Gen Gray continued, “We don’t have to take sides concerning political or religious questions which may be in dispute in America. We can endeavor to state as simply as possible those great convictions upon which nearly all Americans agree. These are the simple principles as rules of life, beliefs that secure our order, our justice and our freedom.”

For more information and to follow the organization’s progress, visit Carolina Museum of the Marine | Al Gray Civic Institute’s website at MuseumoftheMarine.org.

Author’s bio: Ashley Danielson is the executive director and vice president of development at Carolina Museum of the Marine | Al Gray Civic Institute in Jacksonville, N.C. She has worked in nonprofit management and philanthropy for more than 30 years and is married to a Marine veteran.

Pocket-Sized Storyboards

Zippos Carried into Combat Were More than Just Cigarette Lighters

By Sara W. Bock

When he found himself on a second tour in the heavy jungles of Vietnam in 1969, Kenneth Moulton wasn’t sure that this time he’d be lucky enough to make it home alive. The young radio operator and forward observer, soon to pin on the rank of sergeant, decided to mark the promotion by purchasing a memento, which in those days could be found in the pocket of nearly every Marine serving in a combat zone: a Zippo lighter.

A seemingly utilitarian buy—Moulton chose a standard brass-cased lighter from a post exchange in Da Nang—became something more consequential when, while on R&R in Bangkok, Thailand, Moulton had both sides of the lighter engraved with custom text that told the story of his service and, upon closer examination, reflected his sentiments about the grim realities of war.

In addition to basic information such as his name, service number, and years in the Marine Corps, Moulton included a quote by Julius Caesar, “Vidi, Vici, Veni,” modified to take on a subtly more vulgar meaning, and most notably, a list of locations around the world with asterisks to mark the number of times he had visited each. Vietnam. Okinawa. Bangkok. Singapore. Wake Island. Mexico. At the bottom of the list was “CONUS,” a commonly used acronym for the continental U.S., but instead of an asterisk, it was followed by a question mark. Would he ever be stateside again?

In 2015, along with other items of significance from his service in Vietnam, Moulton donated the lighter to the National Museum of the Marine Corps, where it joined an extensive collection of lighters under the care of Cultural and Material History Curator Jennifer Castro, whose other collections range from sweetheart jewelry and movie posters to toys, watches and more. And while several of the lighters she’s accepted from donors were made by other brands, Zippos, known for their incomparable windproof design, have long been favored by Marines and other U.S. servicemembers.

Castro compares personalized Zippos of the Vietnam era to the challenge coins that are commonly purchased and exchanged by Marines today: a small token by which to document service with a unit, celebrate promotions and occasions or say “thank you” for a job well done. But beyond the challenge coin comparison, Castro considers them to be statement pieces, or as she likes to refer to them, “personal storyboards.”

“They document a distinct period of time in an individual Marine’s service,” Castro said. “And the common tradition among Marines, and I feel like most servicemembers, to buy something inexpensive, using it to tell their own story, their specific service during the war. […] They’re very unique and they’re representative of the individual Marine who obtained it and had it customized to talk about their service.”

When she accepted Moulton’s donation, Castro recalls him telling her that he had purchased lighters to document his promotions in rank and to help with his “pack a day” smoking habit. And while the engraving on his 1969 Zippo is one-of-a-kind, it is just one of countless personalized lighters carried by Marines and other American servicemembers during that era.

There’s another Vietnam-era Zippo lighter in the museum’s collection that appears completely unremarkable. There isn’t anything “personalized” about it at all, but in her collection file, Castro notes: “the silver tone Zippo flip-top lighter has a tiny knob of broken metal on one side where an emblem or insignia has fallen off.”

The lighter, owned by Marine veteran Harold Ligon, once bore a brass Marine Corps emblem—the iconic eagle, globe and anchor—on its case. While serving with Company A, 1st Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment in Vietnam in 1967, Ligon developed a nervous habit. He would reach into his pocket and rub the insignia in an attempt to ease his stress and anxiety. Eventually, the eagle, globe and anchor was completely worn away, leaving behind only a very small bump and a faint outline of where it once had been adhered.

“It was his worry stone,” Castro said of the Zippo, which Ligon carried with him during periods of intense combat, including at Hill 881 South. She found his story to be particularly profound. “The best ones that come in are the ones that come with the history of the Marine who served,” she said.

Among the museum’s most interest-ing Zippo lighters, most of which are not currently on display but rather are stored in a nearby auxiliary facility, a broad range of attitudes and narratives are conveyed.

Once owned by Private First Class Gary Morrison, one Zippo portrays Snoopy as a flying ace, sitting on his shrapnel-ridden dog house under a speech bubble that reads “F— It” on one side, and an image of Snoopy with his head hung low, with a thought bubble that says “Sex” on the other. Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” cartoons had been a regular feature in Stars and Stripes, Castro says, and were popular among the troops, many of whom identified with the fictional beagle’s various woes. Yet another lighter, donated by retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Larry Britton, a CH-46 pilot who served with HMM-364, “the Purple Foxes” in Vietnam, was a gift from his brother that displayed the crest of Britton’s college fraternity, Delta Sigma Phi. On the other side, Britton had the following quote inscribed while still in Vietnam: “For those who fight for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know.”

Yet another was discovered by museum employees during the restoration of an Ontos vehicle in 2004, lodged in the front engine compartment. It was traced back to PFC Ralph Ronald Cummings, a Marine rifleman who was killed in action in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam, in 1970.

“Interestingly, PFC Cummings was not a crew member or related in any way to work with Ontos vehicles,” said Castro. “In discussions with veterans and curatorial researchers, it is believed that the piece fell inside the vehicle engine from Cummings’ uniform pocket. Interviews with Ontos veterans revealed that Marine casualties were often evacuated from the battlefield by being thrown across the sloped front of the vehicle. It is possible that PFC Cummings was wounded or killed and placed on the sloped front of the Ontos vehicle, and the lighter slipped from his pocket and into the engine compartment.”

The engraving on the lighter reads “Cummings,” and in Vietnamese, “LINDA Nguoi yeu ly tuong cua RON,” which Castro says roughly translates to “Linda, Ron’s lover.” To date, Castro has been unable to track down his next of kin or anyone connected to him by the name of Linda.

“From a cultural perspective, the lighters demonstrate sort of the pride, the flair, the esprit de corps of U.S. Marines serving overseas,” said Castro. “During the Vietnam War, engravings found on lighters documented the experiences of men at a certain place and time, capturing both a wide range of sentiments and opinions about the war and individual experiences.”

But the tradition of Marines carrying Zippos into combat began long before the U.S. entered the war in Vietnam. The lighter was first envisioned by George G. Blaisdell in Bradford, Pa., in the early 1930s when, while sitting with a friend at the Bradford Country Club, Blaisdell watched him fumble with an Austrian lighter that required him to use two hands to light. He began to reimagine the lighter, which worked well in windy conditions, working to craft a new and improved version that was both attractive and could be operated with ease using only one hand. The first Zippo was produced in 1933, and Blaisdell’s patent application was approved in 1936. They sold for $1.95 and came backed by a lifetime guarantee, which the company—now owned by Blaisdell’s grandson, George B. Duke—continues to issue today for its products, which are still crafted in Pennsylvania. Remarkably, despite a steep decline in cigarette smoking in recent decades, 2021 marked the best sales year in the company’s history, proof of the enduring longevity of the brand.

During World War II, the lighters were so popular among servicemembers that from 1943 to the end of the war, Zippo allocated its entire production to the armed forces, making them available for purchase only by members of the U.S. military, said Katie Zapel, Ph.D., the archives manager for the Zippo Manufacturing Company.
During WW II, said Zapel, Blaisdell “sent lighters to top military officials and the famous war correspondent, Ernie Pyle, who corresponded with Blaisdell. Blaisdell would send Pyle small shipments of lighters to give out to soldiers he met at the front. Pyle wrote back to Blaisdell, calling Zippo lighters ‘the most coveted item on the battlefield.’ ”

“Amid the uncertainty of war, there was one thing a [servicemember] could rely on—his Zippo lighter. In rain, wind or snow, it worked every time,” said Zapel. “The company archives are filled with letters detailing the services a Zippo lighter was called to perform: heating rations in a helmet, lighting campfires, sparking fuses for explosives, hammering nails and even signaling […] with the famous Zippo ‘click.’ On several occasions, a Zippo lighter in a shirt or pants pocket even saved a life by deflecting bullets.”

Zapel references a 1946 newspaper article in which Marine Colonel Bob Churley said that a Zippo lighter likely saved his life.

“Churley, a U.S. Marine serving in North China/Manchuria, was helping to hold back [Mao Tse-tung’s] Chinese communist army from overtaking the region until Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Chinese forces could arrive,” said Zapel. “Churley’s plane experienced a frozen carburetor and landed in communist territory. The pilot, a second lieutenant, pulled out his Zippo lighter, lit it and held it against the carburetor. It worked and they were able to fly off.”

Because of a brass shortage during WW II and subsequent rationing, Zippo began making its cases from steel instead of the standard brass. To prevent corrosion, the steel cases were dipped in black paint and then baked, producing what became known as the Black Crackle® finish. According to “Warman’s Field Guide: Zippo Lighters” by Dana and Robin Baumgartner, a similar shortage during the Korean War necessitated another temporary return to steel cases. In the mid-1950s, the company began stamping date codes on the bottom of each lighter, which now help collectors and historians like Castro date and identify them.

“They became big during World War II, but in a different way, they became such a cultural item by the Vietnam War. They were used to heat food, signal helos at night during rescue missions, and more,” said Castro. “It was reported during the time that Marines used them to set Vietnamese village huts afire while on search and destroy missions. Zippos were reportedly used so often in the country on search and destroy missions that the GIs nicknamed them ‘Zippo Missions’ or ‘Zippo Raids.’ Zippo became synonymous with flame-thrower and was used as a verb in the phrase, ‘Zippo that hut,’” she added.

For Castro, small items like Zippo lighters that might seem trivial often carry a great deal of significance and might be exactly the kind of donation the museum may be looking for to fill gaps in its collections.

“The museum collects all the things that people think we do,” Castro said. “They’ll call us up and say, ‘Hey, I have uniforms, I have weapons […] but they don’t always necessarily think of the things that might tell the Marine’s individual story. There are so many more things that the museum accepts than what people normally come to us with.’ ”

To Castro, it’s significant that Zippos were an item that nearly every Marine chose to carry in their packs, their pockets or their helmet straps—and it’s a testament not only to the multitude of uses for the lighter, but also to the sentimental and personal value attached to them.

“How much stuff can they actually carry with them during combat? This was something they felt was worth carrying,” Castro said.

Author’s note: Special thanks to Jennifer Castro, the cultural and material history curator at the National Museum of the Marine Corps, for significant contributions to this article.

Editor’s note: All lighters from the collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps were photographed by Jason Monroe.

Honoring Our Promise

Toxic Exposure Victims Would Benefit From Bill Expanding VA Coverage

By Beth Brown

On March 3, House Resolution 3967 advanced through the U.S. House of Representatives with a vote of 256-174. This bill encompasses several major provisions including areas of burn pits exposure in Iraq, Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam, and contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, N.C., that would potentially allow veterans, civilians and family members who have experienced health effects from toxic exposure to file for relief from harm.

As part of the overall PACT Act, the provisions of the “Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2021” are of particular interest to Marines and their family members who “resided, worked, or otherwise exposed (including in utero exposure) to water aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C., from August 1, 1953, to December 31, 1987, for not less than 30 days.” Until now, laws particular to the state of North Carolina have prevented such motions.

All legal action undertaken by the bill’s proposed provisions must be qualified not only by the time period stated above, but with evidence that the individual is currently diagnosed with a health condition that was caused by exposure to the water; was associated with the exposure to the water; was linked to the exposure to the water; or the exposure to the water increased the likelihood of such harm.

The bill goes further into detail, stating that while the burden of proof for all claims is the responsibility of the petitioner, “studies conducted on humans or animals, or from an epidemiological study, which ruled out chance and bias with reasonable confidence and which concluded, with sufficient evidence, that exposure to the water described in subsection A is one possible cause of the harm, shall be sufficient to satisfy the burden of proof described.” The full text of the bill is available at https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/hr2192/text.

For the thousands of veterans and their loved ones who have been locked in a decades-long battle with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) regarding Camp Lejeune water contamination, the bill’s passage marks an important step in the fight for recognition of the suffering they and their family members have endured. Currently, veterans or dependents who may have water contamination-related claims are required to submit them through the VA Office for Health Care and Disability Benefits, depending on the severity of their illness.

According to the VA, since 2011, just 17.3 percent of disability claims submitted in response to water contamination at Camp Lejeune have been approved.

For Tara Craver, the bill means more than an opportunity for financial restitution. Her husband, Karle Craver, was a Marine veteran who had been stationed at Camp Lejeune. When he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2014, it was the first time either of them became aware that he was potentially exposed to toxic chemicals while serving his country.

“It’s not about me,” said Tara Craver. “We didn’t know. Karle didn’t know. He brushed his symptoms off as heartburn.”

Tara and Karle found out about Camp Lejeune contamination concerns when they went into a VA office to apply for benefit assistance for his healthcare shortly after diagnosis.

“There was a little sign on the desk that said something about Camp Lejeune. So, I asked, ‘What’s this about Camp Lejeune?’ Someone came out of the office to talk to us. That’s how we found out,” Tara Craver recalled.

Esophageal cancer is one of the conditions considered eligible for care by the VA in regard to claims associated with Camp Lejeune. Due to this, Tara and Karle were told that his claim would be expedited for treatment. A month after registering, they received a letter stating he had been scheduled for a doctor’s appointment a month away.

Sadly, Karle Craver lost his battle with cancer on the very day he was scheduled to attend that appointment. Tara, despite having no income, has dedicated her life to raising awareness of Camp Lejeune contamination. She has participated in dozens of interviews, founded the Facebook Group “Camp Lejeune Victims ‘The Faces,’ ” which now has more than 2,800 members, and embarked on a 10-state awareness campaign, standing outside VA hospitals with signs and information regarding the contamination.

After Karle’s passing, Tara also found herself struggling to qualify for survivor benefits. After multiple denials, she was awarded benefits in 2017, deemed retroactive to 2014. While she very nearly lost everything, including her home, the money was of less importance to her than raising awareness to others. “If we didn’t know,” she says, “how many others didn’t know? Money can’t bring back what we lost.”

For others, it’s difficult to remember how their loved ones struggled with illness-related financial difficulty and not feel some measure of relief that compensation beyond medical care or disability might finally be available. Jill Dilgard, whose father, Larry Lee Steen, was a Marine veteran once stationed at Camp Lejeune, remembers her father’s struggle to remain financially independent while battling multiple cancers and cardiovascular ailments. She was still a freshman in high school when her father had his first heart attack at the age of 45.

His three children all worked together to help their father despite his protests. Dilgard describes him as a proud and loving man, who, after winning his fight with prostate cancer, had a chemotherapy pump implanted so that he could continue to work through treatment for prostate cancer, following treatment for aggressive bladder cancer. She describes him as a man who still embodied everything the Marine Corps stands for: loyalty, strength and determination. Despite his multiple diagnoses, he maintained a positive and capable mindset, making the decision to receive hospice care when it became clear his cancer had metastasized and was incurable.

Much like Tara and Karle Craver, Dilgard’s father was unaware of his potential exposure until 2017, when a family friend brought it up in conversation. While he did apply for VA assistance, his application had not been approved before he died seven months later.

Dilgard supports financial recognition for affected veterans or their families beyond healthcare and disability if their claims are accepted. “They don’t cover the devastating and catastrophic effects on the finances. You pay co-pays, medication; you’re too sick to work. You have to go to specialized units for care. The cost of radiation and chemotherapy are extreme.” She is currently a Facebook group administrator for “The Faces” and shared Tara’s sentiments on awareness. “If we had known, he could have gotten preventative screenings. Maybe it would have been caught earlier.”

Larry Lee Steen

Still others are living the reality of illnesses they believe are related to their time at Camp Lejeune. Sam Maynard, a Marine veteran who was stationed there for four months in 1986, is one such veteran. He volunteered for service at 19, he says, out of high school. He attended a seven-week school at Camp Lejeune, with an additional two months before and after his training began, before being stationed in Hawaii. He remembers that while in training to become an electrician, he became so dizzy he fell off a 30-foot training pole. He noticed a physical decline while there.

“I was in such good shape coming from boot, you couldn’t stop me. By the time I left, I was a wreck,” Maynard said, adding that while there, he developed skin boils and his 3-mile run time increased from 18 minutes to 24 minutes.

It wasn’t until about 16 years later that Sam suffered a stroke that changed his life. He’s hazy on the details, but his surgeon told him that he had a stroke during an operation, which led to partial paralysis. Today, he’s lost one foot and is in a battle to keep his other while also experiencing neurological effects and recurring infections. While he does receive VA healthcare, his disability application has been rejected 10 times as his medical concerns do not meet any of the currently recognized Camp Lejeune water contamination-related conditions.

His only income is Social Security, which he says has affected his life profoundly. “I don’t want to be disabled,” he says. “Believe me, I would rather work. Before I got sick, I was making six figures. I’ve lost everything; I’ve sold everything. I didn’t even go to my daughter’s wedding because I feel like if I can’t even give her a gift, I shouldn’t go.” He said that he’s in danger of foreclosure on his home and can’t understand the situation he’s in today. “I signed on the dotted line that said they’d take care of me if anything happened to me. Not from what I’ve seen.”

The VA lists the following conditions as presumptive for healthcare eligibility in relation to the Camp Lejeune water contamination: bladder cancer, breast cancer, esophageal cancer, female infertility, hepatic steatosis, kidney cancer, leukemia, lung cancer, miscarriage, multiple myeloma, myelodysplastic syndromes, neurobehavioral effects, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, renal toxicity, and scleroderma.

The following conditions are also potentially eligible for disability for active duty, reserve and National Guard members who were potentially exposed: adult leukemia, aplastic anemia and other myelodysplastic syndrome, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and Parkinson’s disease.

The subject of the Camp Lejeune water contamination has been a focus for the VA since the mid-1980s, when it became apparent that wells supplying water to the installation were polluted. After investigation, it was concluded that there were two main sources for the pollution: an off-base dry cleaner which disposed of chemicals in a septic tank very near one of the well reservoirs, and a broken fuel tank.

Following an investigation, Camp Lejeune was listed as an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site and has since undergone decades of remediation efforts.

In 1999, questionnaires were sent to former Camp Lejeune residents by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), but it’s unknown how many of the estimated 1 million individuals who had potentially been exposed received this letter.
In 2018, the VA expanded its review of chemical exposure in relation to Camp Lejeune in an attempt to amend regulations and establish presumptions of service connection for certain conditions in addition to the 15 conditions already deemed eligible in connection with the ATSDR. At the time of press release, veterans with potential exposure were encouraged to contact their local VA healthcare facility or visit https://publichealth.va.gov/exposures/camp-lejeune/ to learn more about the Camp Lejeune water issue and to sign up for email notifications of updates as they occur.
ATSDR has also established a community assistance panel (CAP) for Camp Lejeune. Affected community members are encouraged to contact CAP with concerns regarding exposure. More information can be found at https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/sites/lejeune/capmeetings.html.

Also known as the “Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act,” H.R. 3967 carries significant importance to all who have served or currently are serving.

Also included in the bill are revised considerations for exposure to Agent Orange and burn pits, which would require the expansion of presumptive related illness from exposure to various toxins to 23 conditions. The bill would further require the VA to provide training and outreach operations to affected veterans, as well as DOD-based training to active-duty personnel on the dangers of exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals (PFAS) and increasing registration eligibility for PFAS-exposed veterans.

Another change proposed is an extension of VA medical care eligibility for post-9/11 veterans from the current five years to 10 years post-military separation, as well as a requirement for the VA to create a provision allowing presumption of exposure to radiation for veterans who participated in cleaning operations in Palomares, Spain, and Enewetak Atoll following nuclear accidents.

Author’s bio: Beth Brown is a writer who has worked both as a staff reporter and independently. She is the daughter of a Marine, a veteran of the USCG and the spouse of an active-duty Coast Guardsman.

FedEx Founder Frederick W. Smith

“I Owe a Debt of Gratitude to the Marine Corps”

By Joel Searls

Frederick W. Smith has spent the majority of his lifetime in leadership, first in the Marine Corps during Vietnam, and then later as an entrepreneur in the founding and operating of Federal Express. After graduating from Yale in 1966, he served four years in the Corps, which included two tours of duty in Vietnam. He then launched the original air-ground Federal Express network which began operations in 1973 to serve the rapidly growing high-tech, high-value-added sectors of the economy Smith had predicted. The company has since grown into an $84 billion global enterprise that serves more than 220 countries and territories.

Smith is responsible for providing strategic direction for all FedEx operating companies: FedEx Express, FedEx Ground, FedEx Freight, and FedEx Services, which includes FedEx Office, FedEx Logistics, and FedEx Dataworks. FedEx operations include 684 aircraft, more than 200,000 vehicles, and more than 5,000 operating facilities. Approximately 570,000 team members worldwide handle more than 19 million shipments each business day.

FedEx has been widely acknowledged for its commitment to total quality service. FedEx Express was the first service company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest award for performance excellence, in 1990. FedEx has been recognized by Time magazine as one of the “Time 100 Most Influential Companies” and has consistently been ranked on Fortune magazine’s industry lists, including “100 Best Companies to Work For” and “World’s Most Admired Companies.”

Smith is a Trustee for the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member of both the Business Council and Business Roundtable. He served as chairman of the U.S.-China Business Council and co-chair of the French-American Business Council. He has served on the boards of several large public companies— Malone and Hyde (AutoZone), First Tennessee, Holiday Inns, EW Scripps, and General Mills—and charitable organizations including St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Mayo Foundation. He was formerly chairman of the Board of Governors for the International Air Transport Association and chaired the executive committee of the U.S. Air Transport Association. Smith served as co-chairman of the U.S. World War II Memorial project alongside Senator and World War II veteran Bob Dole, and then as the co-chairman of the campaign for the National Museum of the Marine Corps. He has received several honorary degrees and numerous civic, academic, and business awards including the Global Leadership Award from the U.S.-India Business Council; the George C. Marshall Foundation Award; the Atlantic Council’s Distinguished Business Leadership Award; the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy; and the Circle of Honor Award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. In addition, Smith is a member of the Aviation Hall of Fame and the Business Hall of Fame. He appeared on Forbes’ “100 Greatest Living Business Minds” and has been named a top chief executive officer by both Barron’s and Chief Executive magazines.

As a highly decorated Marine Corps infantry officer and forward air controller (FAC) in the jungles of Southeast Asia, he learned critical leadership lessons and had lifechanging experiences. Smith was awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star. After leaving the Corps, he then pursued his entrepreneurial dream, which started as an urgent package delivery service.
Editor’s note: The author recently conducted a virtual interview with Fred Smith, discussing everything from his service in the Corps to the future of FedEx.

What are the most important leadership traits you have utilized in the founding and operating of FedEx?Well, I think if you were to go to a FedEx Leadership Institute class, and I would emphasize that our management school is called The Leadership Institute, so that should be a dead giveaway that the Marine Corps had a big emphasis in my life because you have to be a great leader to be able to withdraw the discretionary effort out of people in the service industries. … It’s similar to athletics and the military where the leader’s job is to get that discretionary effort, which in the military can be up to and including risking or losing one’s life in furtherance of the mission. So, if you were to read the FedEx Manager’s guide … which I wrote the original version of it, or you read the FedEx Operating Manual you would find as an NCO or company grade officer in the Marine Corps the doctrine and basic tenets of leadership and management are straight out of what the Marine Corps teaches and had a very big influence on me. In 2008, I wrote a brief article in the Naval Institute Proceedings at the request of its editor Bob Timberg, also a Vietnam Marine veteran, where I talked about how important my Marine Corps service was in all of the principles I used to found … then continue to use to this day at FedEx even though it is a company approaching 750,000 people. Our philosophy, People Service Profit (PSP) goes right back to that core tenet that the Marine Corps teaches its young officers and NCOs, and that’s take care of the troops. … If you take care of the troops, they’ll take care of, in our case, the customers or the mission and you’ll achieve success. So, I cannot overemphasize how important the Marine Corps was in my business career, more important than my formal education I might add. How to manage an organization and achieve goals and results really, mostly was from my Marine Corps experience and of course sports was important to me too … my Marine Corps experience was the bedrock on which FedEx was formed.

We select, we just don’t let anybody into our management ranks, and we have to evaluate you to see if you have the ability to lead people. … The traits that a leader has, which are taught by the Marine Corps: keep your men informed, make clear the mission, look after your troops, all of those core bedrock principles of leadership are taught in our Leadership Institute. Now we also teach them … the formal aspects of management which we call Quality Driven Management (QDM) which is usually with statistics and all kinds of what other companies would call Six Sigma … quality management techniques to manage the enterprise. But since our product is a service, we don’t make automobiles or food where you can just repeat the processes.

It’s a new day every day when we put all of those tens and tens of thousands of vehicles on the street or fly all those planes, so you have to have great leadership at the first level of management to be able to accommodate all of the vagaries and vicissitudes … the weather … traffic and all the things we deal with every day. That’s why we have leader managers and not just managers. … The principles of the Marine Corps are as true today as they were when I learned them some 50 some odd years ago and they’re probably exactly the same thing as the Athenians and Spartans were teaching their troops 2,000 years ago.

How does your Marine training in troop welfare influence the culture of FedEx and how do you take care of your employees?We do it in a lot of different ways. Praise in public and counsel in private. We have BZs, which everybody in the naval service knows which are the two the flags that the admiral puts up on the yard arm to mean “well done.” … So, I adopted that. If you’ve done an outstanding job, a manager can give someone a BZ voucher, dinner for two, an unexpected reward sticker … on a memo, or a BZ lapel pin, it’s straight out of Marine Corps leadership and the naval services.

I think probably the most important thing is we made a commitment to our folks that if they do well, they will have an opportunity to advance. … If the company does well, we’ll share the rewards with them so that is the bedrock of that PSP philosophy. … In the military it’s quite the norm that you go from lieutenant to captain to major and so forth. So, you promote from within by definition. In the business world that’s a bit of an unknown thing in many organizations. You mean you started off as a package handler and now you’re a vice president at FedEx. We have platoons of them. That’s why veterans find it such a familiar and friendly place to work because they’re used to that extraction of discretionary effort, setting the example, keeping your troops informed. So, if they do a good job they can go as high in the organization as they want based on their abilities. … it’s very familiar to anybody that has been in the military service, particularly in the Marine Corps.

I invite anybody who has spent 35 years at FedEx to come by and see me when they retire. … There’s not a week that goes by that I don’t have several people that are informing me [they] are retiring after 35 or 40 years. I don’t know this for a fact, but I would bet that we have more long service employees at FedEx than any major company in America because that loyalty needs to go both ways and so that’s the most important part of the PSP philosophy.

Our folks had really worked hard on the front lines of keeping the at-home, industrial and healthcare supply chains operating. Most people were doing remote work. Our people were out there delivering and flying planes, so we gave all of our front-line employees a very significant bonus in January 2021. It wasn’t part of their regular pay package, but that reinforcement of focus on commitment to the mission and taking care of the customer in our particular case. It’s worked very well for us for many years.

Yes, I think people relate to these principles because they’re universal truths and they also relate to them in other parts of the world. You may have to modify it … to the culture, but the golden rule is as true in the Middle East as it is Latin America or Micronesia. Again, you have to make sure you modify it for the local culture. So, our PSP philosophy has worked for us every place, and we serve 220 countries and territories.

Now some of them are agents who are licensed to be FedEx there, but those that are actually FedEx, which is the vast majority of our operations overseas, if you went to them and asked them about PSP or Quality Driven Management, they would know exactly what you’re talking about. It’s a lingua franca that goes throughout the FedEx organization around the globe and again it all comes back from those basic leadership and managerial principles.

I mean I still use the Marine Corps method of laying out a strategic issue for our strategic management committee, Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration, Coordination and Communication; SMEAC. That’s what I learned in The Basic School. It’s pretty solid stuff.

What key components did you take from your service in the Corps and how has that evolved over time?I think people are a bit more questioning today than they were in my era and would be even more so if you went back to the Korean and World War II generations. So, you probably have to put more effort into communication in the “why” rather than the “what,” but that is a good thing, that’s not a bad thing. I think communication is more intensive, particularly today with social media. You can have some incredible firestorm that erupts over some post or mistake. You see it every day in the business press. So, those communication skills are even more important, and we’ve had to get better and better at that. Biannually, I put out a letter to the entire organization to sort of set the stage as to what our board of directors is trying to do and the things we need to focus on.

For instance, two years ago I did a very extensive one on the changed world of cyber security. Your phone now is a way into your life and a potential weapon against you. Those communications as to what’s going on and why we are putting restrictions on use of your phone and clicking on this or that in your [personal computer]. It’s a more complex world and it’s a world in which the average team member is much more informed, perhaps erroneously, but they have all kinds of information coming at them.

So, you have to put a lot of time and effort into the communication in an organization this size to make sure everybody understands what we are doing and not only what we are doing, but why we’re doing it, and when something goes wrong, you know what we’re doing to fix it. So, those are modifications I think brought by modern technology like we are using today doing an interview 1,500 miles apart and it’s like we are sitting here in the same room.

Outside of “Devotion,” what are your favorite films to have produced (financed) and why?Well, there have been a lot of them. I guess one of them that comes to mind is “The Blind Side.” That was a famous story about left tackle Michael Oher who was written about by Michael Lewis, one of our great authors of the day. He [Oher] was adopted by a family in Memphis. He came from a rough situation and went on to be a great football player. So, my daughter Molly found that script and we knew the family and in fact my youngest son is married to the Collins, the real Collins, who is in the movie. “The Blind Side,” I believe is the highest-grossing sports movie of all time, so obviously that’s a favorite for a lot of reasons.

The initial movie that I financed for Alcon Entertainment is still one of my favorites. It’s called “My Dog Skip” and it has Diane Lane and Kevin Bacon in it. If you watch “My Dog Skip” and you don’t have a tear in your eye in the last frame of that movie, you’re not human. … It’s based on a Willie Morris novel. Willie Morris was a great Southern writer … of the Faulkner tradition … he was the editor of Harper’s. “My Dog Skip” remains a favorite, but there’s so many of them.
Then my daughter Molly, who was an NYU film school graduate, and then worked for Alcon, the original film company I backed with these two young men that went to Princeton together, she started her own company called Black Label Media. She’s done a number of them that are favorites of mine. “Sicario,” about the drug trade and “Soldado” [“Sicario: Day of the Soldado”]. If you watch those two movies, they were several years in advance of exactly what you’re seeing on the border. They were very prescient. Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Emily Blunt. Those were great films.

“Only the Brave,” Josh Brolin was also in that one and Miles Teller and Jennifer Connelly . . . about the hotshot firefighters that saved Prescott, Ariz., and unfortunately lost their lives. It didn’t do great financially, but it’s a wonderful movie. In the military genre, “12 Strong” which was about ODA 595, the first Special Forces Group that went into Afghanistan after 9/11, it’s a remarkable story, very well received commercially. Molly was an executive producer, she’s a working producer, but she was an executive producer and helped to fund “La La Land,” which was a huge success. Of course, more recently they’ve just finished in Black Label Media two films, one of them for Netflix called “Reptile,” which is a detective story with Benicio Del Toro and Justin Timberlake.

Geoff Stults, who acted in both 12 Strong and Only the Brave, was a guest on MCA’s podcast Scuttlebutt. You can listen on iTunes or Spotify or watch it off of YouTube here.

“Devotion” is a story that is close to your heart, and you have produced (financed) the film which is due out in theaters next year. Why did you choose to back the film, what do you like most about it, and what do you want audiences to take away from their experience?Then close to my heart and to anybody that has been in the naval service and the Marine Corps is the movie adaptation of the New York Times best seller by Adam Makos called “Devotion.” It’s about Jesse Brown, the first African-American naval aviator and his wingman Tom Hudner flying Corsairs in support of the Marines surrounded at the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea in late fall 1950. The film tells the incredible set of circumstances which led to Brown being shot down and Hudner deliberately crash landing his plane in 15 degree below zero weather to try to save Jesse Brown, which unfortunately was unsuccessful.

That movie comes out this summer and it’s shot with real airplanes. They’re not CGI airplanes, they’re real Corsairs, and Sky Raiders and Bearcats which they were flying up at Quonset before they transitioned to the Corsairs on the USS Leyte. … It’s a fantastic film and it’ll be out in late summer so I can guarantee you that is going to be a favorite of mine, and I think its [going to] be a favorite of any Marine or Sailor that watches it too.

Well, I funded “Devotion” because the story of these two men deserves to be told. It’s incredible to me that it never was told before now and again it’s because Adam Makos wrote this wonderful book about these two men largely unknown. People in the Navy know about Brown and Hudner, and Hudner thought he was going to be court martialed when he deliberately crash landed his plane, but he wasn’t; he received the Medal of Honor. So, he’s quite well-known in naval aviation circles, but among the general public these two men are not known. Jesse Brown was to naval aviation what Jackie Robinson was to baseball or the Tuskegee Airmen were to Air Force aviation.

In fact, President Reagan gave the commencement address at Tuskegee in 1987 and he talks at the end of his commencement address for about ten minutes about Jesse Brown and says just what I said. Everybody knows about the Tuskegee Airmen, but nobody knows about Jesse Brown who broke the color barrier in naval aviation. There wasn’t a single (African-American) naval aviator during World War II. Then in 1948, he went to Ohio State and went through all kinds of prejudice and got his wings and then ended up giving his life getting the Marines out of the Chosin Reservoir cauldron and for the United States.

It’s just a message I think getting to what I hope people will take away from the film about two men. They couldn’t be from anymore disparate backgrounds, one a sharecropper’s son from Mississippi and one from a well-to-do family in Boston who broke ranks from going to Harvard and went to the Naval Academy, and they come together. They become devoted to one another, hence the name of the movie. It’s a great example of what Dr. King said about judging somebody by the content of their character than by the color of their skin. That’s the message I think that is so needed today. I hope “Devotion” gets that message across and I think people are going to like the film.

The majority of the film’s proceeds go to the Brown-Hudner Scholarship Fund managed by the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation so there is a double benefit of seeing the film because it’s going to educate a lot of legacy Navy and Marine Corps children.

What are your thoughts regarding nostalgia and what are your future projects and plans?I’m so interested in everything that is going on today. That’s just been the way I choose to live life. So, it’s not that I don’t think about the past. I think about Vietnam and a lot of my friends almost every day. I certainly think about my oldest daughter who we lost. So, I think about the past, but I’m fascinated with the future, you know drone airplanes and autonomous vehicles, robots, and these incredible genetic medicines that are coming online.

We’re very proud at FedEx for instance. We distributed hundreds of millions of doses of the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines not just in the United States, but around the world. So, think about that this pandemic happens and these incredible scientists been working on it for 20 years come out with this miracle vaccine and then because of FedEx and UPS and others, but we certainly were either the biggest or we and UPS were the biggest in distributing these things.

It’s not that I don’t take great pride in the past and don’t think about the past, but I’m still actively interested in the future. I think as you get older, and I’m 77, if you don’t do that, you tend to maybe concentrate a bit too much on the rear-view mirror and not enough on things to be active and involved.

I think that FedEx which is now an enormous operation as I told you, almost 700 planes, 200,000 vehicles, 5,000 facilities, and 700,000 people in our system around the world. It’s a lot of fun for me to come to work every day and still be active in the management of the company. Now, make sure you and everybody … understands, just like any great organization it’s run by a team. And we have a fabulous president and great executives in marketing and sales.

The CEOs of our operating companies of which we have three major operating companies and three smaller ones, so, [we’ve got to] come together every month as a team and I enjoy the synthesis of ideas, strategies and programs with my business partners. It’s very stimulating and it’s a lot of fun because we are in the center of everything. Everything. Medicine, we’re in the middle of that, computers, production of almost anything that you can think of that is manufactured, we’re right in the middle of that. If you want talk about European politics, Chinese politics, Australian politics, Brazilian politics, we’re in the midst of all of it because we serve all of those countries.

It’s something that I enjoy and this team that’s running this place when I go over the side, as we say in the naval service, it won’t miss a beat because the people that make up that strategic management team are just terrific. I can promise you I learned a long time ago as a very young man as a platoon leader that you want to make sure you have a good succession plan because in those days people often had to call on them. So, we have great management depth and great management training, so I think your readers need to understand … I’m just a representative of that managerial team.

One of my roommates at language school when they sent us out to learn Vietnamese in a compressed curricula in 1967 was General Carl Fulford, and I always tell Carl that he drove me out of the Marine Corps because you could tell he was going to be a general and I was not. … All kidding aside, I have maintained many friends in the Marine Corps throughout the years with Carl, Sen. Jim Webb, LtGen Ron Christmas, I could keep going on and on about all my buddies from the Marine Corps. I’ve always been extremely grateful for what the Marine Corps taught me. A lot of my service was not pleasant, but it shaped who I am, and I owe a debt of gratitude to the Marine Corps, and I was glad to come to this interview and tell you that.

Editor’s note: Effective June 1, Smith will step down as chairman and CEO of FedEx and will assume the duties of executive chairman.
Author’s bio: Joel Searls is a creative and business professional in the entertainment industry. He writes for We Are The Mighty. He serves in the USMCR and enjoys time with his family and friends.

Winsome Earle-Sears: “Leadership is Not What You Say: It’s What You Do”

Exclusive Interview

Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor, Marine Veteran

By Sara W. Bock

In the 1980s, while serving as an electrician at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., Corporal Winsome Earle observed a display of leadership that left a distinct and lasting impression. Assigned to their unit’s quality control section, Earle and her fellow Marines were working around the clock in preparation for a routine Inspector General inspection and were quickly growing exhausted.

“Our warrant officer came out to our platoon formation after we had come back for the evening and we still had another four or five hours to go after we had worked a long day, and he encouraged us,” she recalls during an exclusive interview with Leatherneck, Feb. 18. “I don’t remember the words because all I remember is … He was moving equipment with us, he was inspecting equipment, he was doing all kinds of things. He got more out of us that day than the days before. And I learned that leadership is not what you say: it’s what you do.”

It’s a memory that the first female lieutenant governor of Virginia, Winsome Earle-Sears, continues to call to mind today and strives to emulate as she finds her footing in the Commonwealth’s second-highest office. The affable Republican, who also is the first Black woman to hold statewide office in Virginia, was sworn in Jan. 15, alongside newly elected Governor Glenn Youngkin. Together, they’ve taken the helm of a state with a strong military presence, home to nearly 700,000 veterans and 27 military bases, including the Defense Department’s headquarters, the Pentagon.

Sears served just one enlistment in the Corps, but her identity as a Marine is ingrained in her, and she believes her experiences on active duty prepared her for the responsibilities of her office, which include presiding over the Senate of Virginia where she is responsible for casting tie-breaking votes.

Born in Jamaica in 1964, Sears traveled to New York City as a child to live with her father in the Bronx. She describes an upbringing in which politics and government were frequently discussed—particularly by her grandmother, who was heavily involved in Jamaican politics and with whom she had a cherished bond.

“We just always talked politics. We read two different newspapers every day so that we could be able to have discussions about things,” Sears said, describing family debates about hot button issues, to which she adds, “Jamaicans are very political.”

Sears attributes this in part to the period of democratic socialist rule in Jamaica during her childhood years. “It just destroyed us,” she says. “We understood that you’ve got to get involved in government … Sometimes it takes you growing up and having a family that you start seeing things and you think, ‘No, this is not the future I want for my children.’ So, you get involved, and you can either light a candle or you can curse the darkness. To light the candle is to find the solution. To curse the darkness is to be a victim. And you know in the Marine Corps we always say there are no problems, only solutions and other options.”

Her grandmother’s influence not only sparked an interest in politics and a responsibility to get involved, but also set her on the path to becoming a Marine. Sears was 18 years old when her grandmother died, and although she was enrolled in college and set to begin classes that coming fall, she found herself flailing.

“It just so happened that my mother in Jamaica happened to have a Jet magazine open to the ad with, ‘The Few, the Proud, the Marines.’ And I thought, ‘Yes, this is what I need. I need some discipline. I need a reason to live. And the Marines can sure do that for me,’ ” Sears recalls. “So that’s what happened. I joined the Marine Corps, and I got several reasons to live and a lot of discipline. It was one of the best times of my life for sure.”

After stepping on the yellow footprints at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., in January 1983, Sears quickly learned that she would have to lose what her drill instructors referred to as her “New York attitude.”

“One time the drill instructor said to me, ‘Private Earle, you’re not going to make it, you understand me?’ And I thought, “Wait a minute. I can’t go home a failure!’” she recalls, referring to the DIs as “masters of psychology,” and adding, “You know, the Marine Corps, they see things in you that you don’t even see in yourself.”

The newly minted Marine, who was raised with the mentality that it’s important to acquire a trade or skill, found her niche as an electrician, attending the Marine Corps Engineer School at Courthouse Bay on Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C.

“Man, was it out there in the boondocks!” Sears says with a laugh, recalling that she was the only female Marine in her class. “Being a woman Marine is one thing, and then being a woman Marine in such a field just really makes you one of the very few.”

After completing her military occupational specialty (MOS) training, Sears was assigned to Camp Pendleton, where she was one of just a few women in her unit. She describes how she quickly realized that she had to prove herself capable of meeting the same standards as the male Marines around her, who she says were more than willing to help her out. The gesture was nice, she said, but she knew she had to rely on her own merit in order to make it.

“You have to dig your own ditch, you have to pull your own weight and you will get the respect that’s deserving of you,” said Sears.

She recalls another instance in which she learned to take responsibility for herself: a formation for which she thought she was well-prepared but soon found out otherwise.

“My boots were spit shined, my cammies were excellently pressed, everything was good,” Sears said. But it turned out that her glasses had a few fingerprints on the lenses that she had missed. “And because of that, I didn’t get the day off like all of the others did. I remember thinking, ‘But they’re glasses!’ Details matter … If you’re going to do something right, do it right the first time. No excuses.”

It’s lessons like these that became part of Sears’ leadership philosophy, one that’s to this day heavily influenced by her service in the Marine Corps. She’s also driven by a deep sense of duty to the country that once welcomed her as a young immigrant. Soon after taking the oath of enlistment, she took another oath to become a U.S. citizen.

After leaving active duty in 1986, Sears went on to pursue a wide array of endeavors, including earning a master’s degree; running a homeless shelter; serving as a vice president of the Virginia State Board of Education; starting a small appliance, electric and plumbing business alongside her husband, Terence, who also is a veteran Marine; and receiving presidential appointments to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Advisory Committee on Women Veterans, which reported to the U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 2001, she served one term as a state legislator. Her varied experiences have afforded her a unique perspective of government, of service and of what it means to be an American.

“I think sometimes we as Americans take our liberties for granted, and we don’t understand that you have to fight for your liberties. That you are the government,” Sears said. “Government depends on you being involved. Government depends on you demanding that your leaders represent you and represent you well. That they take your phone calls. That they look out for your best interests, that they’re not there for themselves. That the political leaders understand that they represent you.”

When she ran for the office of lieutenant governor of Virginia in 2021, a significant plank of her campaign was veterans’ issues, including a push to eliminate all state taxes on the first $40,000 of military retirement pay and expand Virginia’s veterans care centers and workforce transition programs. She’s looking forward to tackling issues that are unique to female veterans, adding that while you don’t have to be a veteran to understand how veterans are affected by policy, it makes a difference when you “speak the same language.” She has increasingly been hearing from veterans across Virginia who are seeking help in various capacities.

Sears believes that it’s essential that veterans hold offices at all levels of government—not only to advocate for issues that affect military-connected populations, but also because of the unique skillsets and attributes that veterans bring to the table. Most importantly, perhaps, is an understanding of what really matters, and a shared identity not as Republicans or Democrats but as Americans. She encourages veterans who are interested in running for office to understand the sacrifice and work involved. To them she says, “Give it your all.”

“As veterans, we don’t care if you’re Republican, Democrat, Green Party, whatever party you are,” said Sears. “When we raise our hands to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, we understand that we’re going to die for everybody. Not a political party. We are willing to give our lives for our country and those in it. So, we have a totally different perspective. We’re not so vitriolic sometimes. We understand that you can disagree without being disagreeable … not that veterans are without fault, but I think there is something special about a veteran being in office, having already once raised our hand to uphold the Constitution—it’s not something foreign to us. We’ve done it before.”

This is My Rifle: M1 Garand

By Sam Lichtman

The year was 1932, and then-Major (later Major General) Julian S. Hatcher at the U.S. Army Ordnance Office had a problem. The Army had already decided that it wanted to replace the venerable bolt-action M1903 Springfield with a self-loading rifle to provide its riflemen with rapid-fire capability. Although there were no shortage of talented designers looking to sign a contract, Hatcher had no way to tell who was serious about building a suitable rifle and who was just a hobbyist looking for an easy cash grant. Furthermore, the workable designs that already existed had significant problems—after all, self-loading infantry rifles had been produced in small numbers since before the First World War, but no design had been good enough for a major military to adopt it as standard. A round of trials in 1924 had failed to find a rifle that was entirely suitable, but those trials set the stage for what was soon to come.

Self-loading, or semi-automatic, rifles had been modestly popular among hunters and sport shooters for decades. The ability to fire multiple shots in rapid succession without having to manually cycle the action was highly valuable in the field, but the designs weren’t nearly adequate for military use. Engineers had tried to scale up civilian designs like the Remington Model 8 and Winchester Model 1907 rifles, but they encountered serious problems: the rifles were usually some combination of heavy, inaccurate, fragile, unreliable, or expensive to produce. It quickly became clear that the standard .30 M1906 cartridge was much too powerful and the military’s requirements too stringent for an existing design to simply be adapted for soldiers and Marines to use in combat.

Enter two men named John—John Pedersen and John Garand. Pedersen was a seasoned, experienced firearm designer who had developed several commercially successful firearms while working for Remington. During WW I, Pedersen designed a conversion device which allowed the M1903 Springfield to be quickly adapted into a semi-automatic pistol-caliber carbine; it was adopted by the U.S. military and saw limited use by war’s end. John Moses Browning once called John Pedersen “the greatest gun designer in the world;” high praise from anyone, let alone Browning. Throughout the 1920s, Pedersen had been working on prototype designs for a reliable, accurate self-loading infantry rifle. When the Army started looking for one, he saw this as the perfect opportunity to have his design adopted.

Compared to heavyweights like Pedersen, John C. Garand was a relative unknown in the firearms world. Hailing from Canada, he was a mechanical engineer by training and trade. Much of his career had been spent designing industrial machinery for factories, a skillset which would later come to serve him well. Garand’s experimentation in arms design began in the early 1920s, culminating in his submission of a self-loading rifle to the unsuccessful 1924 Army trials. Changes to the way military ammunition was manufactured rendered the basic operating mechanism unworkable, but by the early 1930s, John Garand had again produced a design worthy of proper military trials.

In 1932, the Army ran another trials program to select and adopt a self-loading infantry rifle to replace the Springfield. This time, the playing field was dominated by only two serious contenders: John Pedersen with his T1E3 rifle and John Garand with his new and improved T3E2, both in caliber .276. Pedersen’s design used a toggle-delayed blowback mechanism with the breech locked by a sort of knee joint during firing. Garand’s design used a more conventional rotating bolt driven by a gas piston, which tapped expanding powder gases from the muzzle to operate the action. In the trials, John Garand’s rifle was found to be more robust and reliable than Pedersen’s and had one crucial advantage—it didn’t need lubricated ammunition. By virtue of its delayed-blowback operating mechanism, John Pedersen’s rifle would seize up and stop functioning unless the cartridges were lubricated, but its internal lubrication system increased complexity and allowed dust and grit to accumulate in the receiver, eventually causing malfunctions without careful cleaning.

The Army also had been testing the prototype rifles not in the standard chambering of .30-’06, but in an experimental .276. Military analysts had already determined that the new cartridge had a number of advantages suiting it well for use in a self-loading infantry rifle. Somewhat smaller and less powerful, the cartridge placed less strain on a rifle’s operating components and produced significantly less felt recoil, allowing soldiers and Marines to fire more rapidly and accurately. Furthermore, the lighter weight and lower production cost of each round allowed men to carry more ammunition into the field and stay in the fight longer.

During the late stages of testing, General Douglas MacArthur personally intervened to throw a proverbial wrench in the whole program. Wary of the additional complications a new infantry cartridge would pose for the U.S. military’s logistical network, MacArthur ordered that the .276 be abandoned immediately and all rifle development focus on the standard .30-’06. John Pedersen had designed his rifles around the .276 cartridge, but Garand had an ace up his sleeve—he had been working with the .30-’06 for longer. One of his crucial advantages was that he could readily redesign his T3E2 in .30-caliber, whereas Pedersen could not as easily scale his own designs up to fire the more powerful round.

This Garand prototype, designated T3E2, competed in U.S. Army trials beginning in 1932. It features a primitive “gas trap” system which taps expanding gases from the muzzle rather than the simpler and more efficient gas port arrangement found in most production M1 rifles.

Although Pedersen was known across the developed world for his design expertise, Garand’s rifle proved more effective and easier to manufacture. It was officially adopted as “U.S. Rifle, Caliber .30, M1” by the Army on Jan. 9, 1936.

The Marine Corps has traditionally been a little more conservative than the Army with adopting new rifles. Marine Corps brass in the late 1930s saw the rapid-fire capability of the Army’s new rifle as nothing more than a great way to waste ammunition and impede precision marksmanship. Despite their initial skepticism, the Corps ran a trials program of its own in 1940 to determine whether a semi-automatic rifle could be better than the venerable Springfield. They tested Pedersen’s and Garand’s designs along with a recoil-operated rifle designed by Marine reserve officer Melvin M. Johnson.

The Corps eventually decided to send some Johnson and Garand rifles to the Pacific theater to see how viable they were in combat. Both rifles, especially the Garand, quickly proved their worth against the Japanese in battles like Guadalcanal. The Japanese had long used the banzai charge as a way to dislodge enemy forces, and this tactic worked very well against Chinese conscripts armed with slow-firing Mausers. But against highly trained U.S. Marines with semi-automatic M1 rifles, a bayonet charge never stood a chance. Far from wasting ammunition, the sheer volume of fire provided by the new rifle allowed Marines to suppress enemy defenders and make rapid follow-up shots at moving targets.

Hearing positive feedback from Marines who had used the M1 in combat, the Marine Corps formally adopted the rifle to completely replace the M1903 and began mass issuing the new rifle to Marines in the field in early 1942.

Recall that John Garand was a production engineer with a great deal of experience designing factory equipment. This background allowed him to design the rifle for ease of production as well as the machines that would perform each operation. This proved to be a key factor in giving the United States an edge during World War II. They could manufacture and field in the mass quantities needed, something that tripped up the likes of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany with their own self-loading rifle programs.

With America’s industrial might at their backs, riflemen of the United States Marine Corps used the M1’s fire superiority to fight their way all the way across the Pacific. Marines carrying M1s raised the American flag over numerous islands, and when war broke out on the Korean peninsula in 1950, soldiers and Marines picked their M1 rifles back up and went to go fight.

Warfare in the bitter Korean winter is very different from fighting on the hot, humid islands of the South Pacific, but John Garand had designed his rifle to function in extreme cold as well as heat. During the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir in 1950, Marines found that their M1s still functioned perfectly fine, except for one thing—lubrication. All firearms require proper lubrication in order to function reliably, and the M1 is no exception, but the natural oil in service at the time had an unfortunate tendency to thicken and gum up in the extreme cold temperatures. Undeterred, Marines simply stripped all the lubricant out of their M1s and ran them bone-dry—and the rifles kept on working.

Even after serving in two wars, the M1 kept soldiering on. Years of work on modifying and improving the rifle’s base design culminated in the adoption of the M14 in 1957. Despite the external differences, every M14 and variant thereof can trace its lineage directly back to the M1. Despite its official replacement, the M1 itself endured in frontline service. It dutifully guarded the inner German border and other hotspots around the world until 1961 when the last examples were finally phased out and sent back to Springfield for refurbishment and storage.

During the 1950s and beyond, militaries on six of the seven continents fielded M1 rifles received from the United States as military aid. Even after they were taken out of American service, M1 rifles gained a new life among civilian marksmen—many of them soldiers and Marines who had carried them in combat. Through the Office of the Director of Civilian Marksmanship (DCM), managed by the War Department, members of shooting clubs across the country could purchase refurbished military surplus rifles that were no longer needed by the U.S. military. To this very day, the DCM—now known as the Civilian Marksmanship Program—sells original 1940s and 1950s production M1 rifles for match shooting.

Few historic military arms have garnered such enduring popularity as the M1. This rifle, revolutionary for its time, is still held in high regard; its influence on tactical doctrine, marksmanship, and later firearm designs is felt in the modern day. Marines at Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Inchon, Outpost Vegas and hundreds of other battlefields didn’t know how famous the rifle would become, of course. All they cared about was whether it worked, and as the record reflects, it did indeed.

Editor’s note: Special thanks to Jonathan Bernstein at the National Museum of the Marine Corps and Geoffrey Roecker of MissingMarines.com for technical research and assistance with photos.

Author’s bio: Sam Lichtman is a college student and licensed pilot. He works part-time as a manager at a gun store and occasionally contributes content to Leatherneck. He also has a weekly segment on Gun Owners Radio.

“Scuttlebutt” Podcast

Is Newest Addition To MCA’s Library of
Audio Content

By Sara W. Bock
When Vic Ruble joined the staff of the Marine Corps Association last year as creative content coordinator and deputy editor of Marine Corps Gazette, he knew he’d be involved in the behind-the-scenes development of the organization’s first-ever podcast. What he didn’t count on was that he would, by default, end up as its host. Initially out of his comfort zone perhaps, but to anyone listening, the role seems a natural fit for the former amtrac officer, a prior enlisted Marine with numerous deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan under his belt. Ruble retired from the Corps as a major in 2018 and then went on to earn a master’s degree in creative writing from American University in Washington, D.C.

Check out Scuttlebutt Here

With a heavy emphasis on the art of storytelling, “Scuttlebutt: An MCA Podcast” launched its first episodes in September 2021, taking its place among the professional association’s wide array of multimedia resources, which includes audio articles from its flagship publications Leatherneck and Marine Corps Gazette; an impressive “Corps Voices” collection featuring interviews with some of the most revered Marines in history, including Lieutenant General Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller; and recordings of guest speakers from MCA’s professional awards ceremonies and events.

The “by Marines, for Marines” podcast, which releases new installments weekly and is recorded on-site at the MCA headquarters aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., has quickly gained subscribers, with more listeners tuning in to each subsequent episode. Ruble and the rest of the “Scuttlebutt” production team, which includes MCA Digital Projects Manager Nick Wilson, who had already set up a recording room and procured the necessary equipment before Ruble came on board; Marine Corps Gazette associate editor William Treuting, who recently earned a master’s degree in history; and seasoned journalist and Leatherneck deputy editor Nancy Lichtman, hope that the informal, conversational format they’ve created will invite listeners to learn from the personal stories of others as well as think critically about current events that impact today’s Marines. The podcast comprises a mix of interviews with high-profile guests and conversations amongst the “Scuttlebutt” team as they discuss the interviews, relevant issues and various aspects of Marine Corps history.

From hot topics like COVID-19 vaccination rates among the ranks and the arrival of Afghan refugees in the U.S., to the implementation of the Commandant’s Force Design 2030 and the Corps’ newly announced talent management initiative, “Scuttlebutt” covers it all. But its primary objective is to showcase the stories and experiences of its diverse range of guests who have agreed to spend an hour or two of their time to join in the discussion.

“The conversations we will have will explore some of the themes and lessons our guests have taken with them to write their stories, so that you, the listener, will have more tools in your kit when it comes time to write yours,” Ruble said in the promotional “teaser” episode of “Scuttlebutt,” adding that his interviews with podcast guests would be akin to “coffeehouse” chats with friends.

Aptly named in a nod to the Marine Corps’ naval roots—the term “scuttlebutt” can be traced back to an early 1800s term for the cask containing a ship’s daily supply of drinking water, inviting conversation among those gathered around it, and later evolved into a slang term for rumor, gossip or “water cooler talk”—the podcast is informal, engaging and often brings out the witty side of its producers.

Ruble is adept at facilitating relaxed, congenial conversations with podcast guests, who have thus far included names like Marine veteran Miles Vining, who authored the 2020 book “Into Helmand With the Walking Dead”; actor Geoff Stults, who spoke about portraying military servicemembers in film and his work with the Merging Vets and Players organization; and retired Marine Sergeant Major and Navy Cross recipient Justin LeHew, who serves as the chief operating officer for History Flight.

“My goal for the podcast is for it to be a place where stories and narratives outside of the mainstream military mediums are featured and heard,” said Ruble. “Just because someone isn’t a Medal of Honor winner or wasn’t part of some badass special forces task force—which we have some of those folks too—doesn’t mean that what they did and how they contributed was insignificant. I would like it if our listeners got the feeling that ‘Scuttlebutt’ features stories that highlight the many nuances of the Marine Corps and that everyone’s story matters. Oftentimes, it’s the stories that we don’t know about that matter the most.”

The burgeoning podcast and the rest of MCA’s audio offerings are part of an ongoing effort to expand the association’s reach and provide content that goes beyond traditional print media. This is not to diminish the role of the iconic Leatherneck and Gazette, which have been telling the Marine Corps story and inviting professional discourse for more than a century, but rather to enhance and support those efforts.

Not only does audio content provide the consumer with tone of voice, inflection and emotion, which are often difficult to adequately capture in the written word, but its format also allows for multi-tasking, such as listening while driving, exercising or doing household chores. This is particularly desirable among those whose busy schedules don’t necessarily allow them time to sit and read a magazine or book but who want to absorb new information, perspectives and stories.

“We want to be both an entertaining storytelling destination and a somewhat professional resource peering behind the scenes at different aspects of the Marine Corps,” said Wilson. “We were looking to reach an audience that the MCA has struggled to keep in contact with over the years, that being the younger ‘25 to 45’ crowd. Which, as it just so happens, is the crowd that listens to podcasts.”

Podcasts like “Scuttlebutt” have soared in popularity in recent years across a broad range of demographics. According to Edison Research, approximately 80 million Americans, or 28 percent of the U.S. population over the age of 12, listen to podcasts each week, which is a 17 percent increase from those who listened in 2020—and this group also is more diverse than ever before. Additionally, the research company’s 2021 Infinite Dial study found that 62 percent of the population are weekly online audio listeners. It seems safe to conclude that these numbers will only continue to rise.

“The younger generation of Marines is less inclined to read a magazine than their predecessors, so with this format, we can reach those young men and women,” said Lichtman, who says she views the podcast as an audio magazine of sorts, employing some of the same concepts she’s used during her career in print media as she assists in its development. “Ideally, the podcast discussions will lead people to pick up a magazine, either the physical copy or the digital format, to take a deeper dive into Marine Corps history.”

She believes that the podcast format, which allows for a free flow of ideas between guests and hosts, fills a different need than either Gazette or Leatherneck, and helps further the association’s mission to develop leaders and to expand awareness of the traditions, history and spirit of the Marine Corps.

Lieutenant General Charles G. Chiarotti, the association’s CEO, agrees with this sentiment, stating that the “Scuttlebutt” team’s efforts contribute directly to the “rich discussion” that the association seeks to encourage among Marines and friends of the Corps.

“Through the research that they do to prepare for each podcast, to their casual on-air demeanor, they are able to uncover the more humanistic aspects of a story or personal account,” said LtGen Chiarotti, who was the featured guest on the “Scuttlebutt” Episode 6, which was released in conjunction with the 246th birthday of the Corps. “They reach a different level of understanding of an experience or a story than most are willing or able to provide through the written form,” he added.

During his appearance on the podcast, LtGen Chiarotti, who was born and raised in Italy, discussed his unconventional path to becoming a Marine, as well as the importance of professional development and what his priorities are as he takes the helm of MCA.

Prior to the recording of each episode, Ruble writes up a pre-interview show setup with discussion points and questions, and the podcast team meets to give suggestions and feedback. The result is a well thought-out, meaningful conversation that explores what it means to serve and to claim the title “Marine.”

“All of our guests have brought their own unique perspectives and personalities to this project,” said Ruble. “Some have been fun because the guest was charismatic, or I already had a relationship with them, so it really was just two friends hanging out. Others have been super informative, and I’ve just been in ‘receive mode’ the whole time as if I were a listener.”

Treuting, whose historical focus is on American military history, hopes to see “Scuttlebutt” attract both military-affiliated and civilian listeners alike and to serve as a springboard for additional audio and visual content produced by the MCA in the future.

“I want our podcast to be an entryway for civilians to become interested and invested in the Marine Corps and to help diminish the cultural/social gap between civilians and the military,” Treuting said.

There’s something for everyone among the audio resources available on the MCA website, whether it’s an oral history interview of General Frank E. Petersen, the Marine Corps’ first Black aviator, in which he describes a racial incident that occurred at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, Calif., in 1953, part of the “Corps Voices” collection, or a speech given by Gen James N. Mattis, USMC (Ret), during an October 2019 MCA professional event. Popular Leatherneck articles, many of which are read by the authors themselves, also are easily accessible. And of course, “Scuttlebutt” is sure to attract an audience both young and old, from a variety of backgrounds.

“If someone has any passing interest in the Marines, I think they’ll find a lot to like in Scuttlebutt,” Wilson said. “I only see growth in the future, and it’ll be fun to be a part of it.”

A Universal Language

As Afghan Evacuees Arrive at Quantico,
Marines Get Creative to Bridge Cultural Divide

Once an extension of Officer Candidates School and today a commonly used training area for Marine reservists, Camp Upshur had been transformed practically overnight into a temporary home for thousands of America’s Afghan allies and their family members, and Battles needed only to travel to his own backyard to record it.

While the experience was in many ways reminiscent of his deployment more than a decade ago, Battles could sense optimism and hope in the air: a stark contrast, he says, to the troubled environment of a war zone. Just weeks earlier, these Afghan men, women and children, fearing retribution for their association with U.S. troops, fled for their lives as the Taliban seized control of their country—and they were the lucky ones. Now, they awaited a new beginning in a nation with a lengthy history of welcoming newcomers to its shores.

“To sketch them in a more safe and secure environment, to see them already starting to flourish, was a very positive thing,” said Battles, who, now a civilian, has served as the Marine Corps Artist in Residence since 2019.

Working intently with his pencil to paper, Battles created rough sketches of Afghan guests eating meals in the chow hall, waiting in line for medical attention and even merely watching him with curiosity.

A single scene in particular stood out to him during his two-hour visit to the makeshift village—one of eight designated “safe havens” at military installations across the country and the only Marine Corps base on the list—where Afghan evacuees were awaiting processing and eventual resettlement into American communities. A Marine was kneeling to the ground, teaching a group of smiling Afghan children to play the timeless childhood game, “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” While observing the simple activity that requires neither material supplies nor a common language, Battles was struck by the significance of the moment: that interactions like these gave the children a first glimpse of their newfound life in America.

“This young Marine, being a young man himself, not much out of high school, he’s not too far away from ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ himself, so he’s sharing his experience which also welcomes them, makes them feel more at home automatically,” said Battles, gesturing toward the aptly named “Rock, Paper, Scissors” oil-on-canvas painting he created based on the sketch. “Games are a great way to build rapport,” he added.

Battles points out some of the nuances in the painting; namely, that the differences in the clothing worn by the two boys gives context clues as to the setting, despite the fact that the monochromatic background does not. One boy is dressed in traditional Afghan clothing and the other is wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and a pair of Crocs that are far too big for his tiny feet.

“People were immediately responding to the call for help and donations,” Battles said in a nod to members of the local community. “It’s in our nature [as Americans] it seems, to help out and to give out of the bounty that we have, so they immediately responded, and of course, the kids are already wearing the T-shirts.”

Indeed, within hours after the news broke on Aug. 26 that MCB Quantico had been selected as a temporary housing site for Afghan evacuees, the base began receiving offers of support from individuals in the surrounding military and civilian communities, local interfaith groups and non-governmental organizations. Posts across social media platforms called for items like pillows, bedsheets, diapers and school supplies to support the arriving guests who had traveled thousands of miles with little more than the clothes on their backs.

“We were just really overwhelmed with the incredible outpouring from the community and the sheer quantity of donations that we were receiving at the outset,” said Major Tara Patton, the deputy operations officer for Task Force Quantico, which was formed in support of Operation Allies Welcome, a whole-of-government effort spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Schools and units across MCB Quantico pitched in to help collect supplies during the early days, and as the months have passed, items needed by the guests have continued to pour in. Patton describes the setup of donated goods at Upshur Village as being much like a Walmart store, where Afghan guests can come on their designated days to get the items they need.

According to Danielle Decker, the external affairs officer for Operation Allies Welcome Quantico, the cross-collaborative endeavor to help Afghan evacuees start a new life in America involves the work of multiple agencies and bureaus within DHS, including Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); Customs and Border Protection; and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department and the Department of Energy. The effort also relies heavily, said Decker, on the Department of Defense to provide security and staffing at each base. In addition to Quantico, two other locations in Virginia were chosen, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett, and across America, Fort McCoy, Wis.; Fort Bliss, Texas; Joint Base McGuire-Dix, N.J.; Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., and Camp Atterbury, Ind., also made the list.

During a Nov. 9 State Department town hall meeting for Afghan resettlement stakeholders, former Delaware Governor Jack Alan Markell, coordinator for Operation Allies Welcome, said that cultural advisors were assigned to each of the bases to ensure that the efforts of the military members were supplemented with culturally appropriate food and places of worship.

At Quantico, which Decker says was chosen based on its capacity to provide a secure location that could house and meet the needs of guests while providing essential security and support, representatives from each of the participating agencies were present at an on-site Interagency Coordination Cell (ICC). For Maj Patton, who works in the ICC, it was a unique opportunity unlike anything she’s experienced in her Marine Corps career thus far.

The mission to support Operation Allies Welcome also is an out-of-the-ordinary one for Marines from units across 2nd Marine Logistics Group, part of the Camp Lejeune, N.C.-based II Marine Expeditionary Force, who mobilized at a moment’s notice, diverting from a planned humanitarian relief effort in Haiti to a much closer-to-home locale.

According to Patton, on Aug. 24, the first Marines from 2nd MLG were sent to Quantico. “That was actually on about an hour’s notice,” she adds. At the onset, the Marines lived in two-man tents on site as they readied the squad bays at Camp Upshur, formerly used by OCS, to serve as temporary living shelters for the Afghan guests. As the evacuees began to arrive just five days later on the 29th, the Marines facilitated the check-in process and helped them get settled in.

“Initially we were working pretty hard with the base to use the existing infrastructure at Camp Upshur to support billeting Afghan guests,” Patton said. When it was realized that additional accommodations were needed to support an influx of arrivals, the task force summoned 8th Engineer Support Battalion from Camp Lejeune to establish “Pioneer City,” a second temporary housing area. “In 36 hours, working 24-hour ops, they built the site from nothing, on a landing zone, and turned it into a space for about 1,000 Afghan guests. It’s really been interesting to see it evolve over time,” she added.

As of Oct. 21, said Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Hummitzsch, the executive officer of Combat Logistics Regiment 2, 2nd MLG, roughly 900 U.S. servicemembers, primarily Marines and Navy corpsmen, were supporting the mission in various roles like running the donation center, performing site maintenance and repairs, providing medical care as well as visiting with the guests, playing with the children, and helping their temporary accommodations feel a little bit more like home.

“Everyone is really proud to be part of this historic effort,” said Hummitzsch. “The ability to quickly respond like we did, the opportunity to provide the necessary support to the success of Operation Allies Welcome, and to be able to walk around and see all the smiling faces from all the adults, the families, the kids.”

Recognizing the trauma that many of the Afghan guests went through in order to arrive at Upshur Village, Hummitzsch said, made their smiles even more meaningful to him. “And the Marines and Sailors are doing phenomenal things helping them out every day,” he added.

In October, Decker said that approximately 3,800 Afghan guests were currently living aboard MCB Quantico, adding that some families had at that point been fully processed and were starting their new lives in various locations across the U.S.

“The guests undergo a series of vetting processes throughout their stay with us, and they also undergo intake immigration and biometrics processing and medical screening, and then they’ll ultimately reach their final state of assurance and then ultimately depart camps to their final destination,” Decker said.

During the State Department’s Nov. 9 stakeholders meeting, Nancy Izzo Jackson, who heads the department’s Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration, explained the intake and resettlement process for those evacuees seeking special immigrant visa (SIV) status or qualify for designation as refugees fleeing persecution, stating that the interagency partners were working around the clock to resettle everyone into their permanent home communities as quickly and responsibly as possible. According to Jackson, after initial administrative processing and health screening on one of the eight military bases designated as temporary safe havens, Afghan guests were being connected with one of nine resettlement agency partners to receive their initial placement and assistance.

“This process takes into account family size and composition, any special medical needs, existing connections to U.S.-based family or friends. It also takes into account the locally available housing, schooling and community resources,” Jackson said, adding, “We want to make sure every Afghan is set up for success in their new home communities.”

As the U.S. continues to deal with a critical housing shortage, making it difficult in many areas to find suitable accommodations, the State Department had to get creative and for the first time in its history, partnered with private sector actors like vacation rental company Airbnb.

“We have never had to resettle so many people so quickly and we have never done it while also facing a global pandemic, a national housing shortage and significant staffing shortfalls. So, we have had to innovate to meet the challenge,” Jackson said. “We are relying on support from local U.S. communities and private sector partners to help us succeed in these efforts, and we have already seen an astonishing outpouring of support, both material and emotional, from individual community organizations, individuals themselves and private companies. It is a true testament to the boundless American capacity for generosity towards those most in need. From New Jersey to Wisconsin to New Mexico, our Armed Forces colleagues and local communities around our military bases have opened their arms and their hearts to our Afghan guests.”

For Maj Patton, who served in Afghanistan, her role with Task Force Quantico afforded her a unique opportunity to see her time there come full circle. During the early months of her assignment at Upshur Village, there was an interaction she won’t soon forget. A 4-year-old girl, who evidently had been observing the Marines’ interactions with each other at Upshur Village, stopped and saluted her as she walked by.

“I just kind of stopped in my tracks and realized that that little girl could be back here in Quantico 20 years from now as a Marine Corps second lieutenant going through [The Basic School]. While that may or may not be in the cards for her, the fact that she’s here and going through this process means that if she wants to, she has that opportunity. There are those little moments that really resonate with you personally and make it a worthwhile endeavor,” Patton said.

As Kris Battles and fellow combat artist Elize McKelvey, a veteran Marine who also is part of the Marine Corps Combat Art Program, observed and sketched at Upshur Village, children played and ran free. At one point, a large group of them gathered around McKelvey’s sketchbook with pens and pencils and began creating doodles of their own. In that moment, Battles could sense that the children felt at home there, and the artists relished the opportunity to connect with them through a shared interest.

“Part of our job as combat artists is to record for posterity in traditional media these stories for 100 years from now, for 200 years from now. This was a great opportunity, very historic, and it happened right on our doorstep,” said Battles. “An added benefit of what we do is bridge building. Combat art builds bridges in America between the military and [civilian] cultures, and we also build bridges to other cultures because art is a universal language.”

Editor’s note: On Dec. 23, 2021, just before press time, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the last group of Afghan guests being housed at MCB Quantico had departed the base, making the installation the second safe haven to complete its operations.

Looking for ways to help support Operation Allies Welcome?

The State Department has partnered with Welcome.US, a nonprofit, nonpartisan initiative created “to galvanize additional private sector support and resources for arriving Afghans and channel the immense goodwill of the American people,” explained Uzra Zeya, State’s undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights, during the department’s Nov. 9 town hall meeting.

Interested individuals, veterans organizations, businesses, religious groups and Afghan American diaspora groups can visit the organization’s website, Welcome.US, and from there can donate airline miles to provide transportation from safe havens to resettlement communities; volunteer to provide temporary housing, or sign up for new community sponsorship opportunities.

Operation Allies Welcome goes far beyond the mobilization of military bases and the servicemembers assigned there and extends to the mobilization of an entire nation to welcome our Afghan allies and honor our nation’s obligation to them—an obligation that those Marines who served in Afghanistan understand well.

Nazanin Ash, CEO of Welcome.US, hopes that the effort will help repair division in the U.S.: “Our ultimate ambition is to unite all Americans in this common cause of welcome,” she said.

The Marine Corps Association 100 YEARS OF SERVICE

“Scarlet and gold” oozes out of every nook and cranny of Bartlett Hall. Sporting a cherished post office box of “1775,” most of the 108 full- and part-timers at the Marine Corps Association’s quaint headquarters at Quantico, Va., aren’t Marines. Yet, they are as much Marine as anyone who has stood on the “yellow footprints” at boot camp or completed The Basic School.

“I love my work here,” said Sherry Linhares, a six-year MCA civilian marketing coordinator and a perky “can do” member of the team. “I love Marines. They are part of my life.”

The Marine Corps will celebrate numerous 100-year anniversaries of its units, installations and battles in the 21st century.
Commemorating its 100 years of service this month, the MCA has been around longer than most service organizations. It has more service stripes than every major Marine base, including Quantico, and all of the Corps’ air and ground combat units.

“We have a great gang here who work hard to help Marines,” said retired Marine Major General Edward G. Usher III, current MCA president and CEO. “Many of our key people double-hat in crucial jobs. We have strong players, but no bench.”

Marines formed the MCA in 1913 before the Corps had recruit depots, tin hats, tanks and dive bombers. The nation had barely 10,000 Marines. It was a time when field-hatted Marines sailed in large Navy ships, shot well, marched often and landed in small boats to skirmish in strange places. Back then, who could have imagined 182,200 Marines or fights like Belleau Wood, Wake Island, Iwo Jima, Chosin, Con Thien and Fallujah?

While a lieutenant colonel, LtGen John A. Lejeune, the13th Commandant of theMarine Corps, was a member of the executive committee forming the Marine Corps Association in 1913 and drafting its constitution and bylaws, which remain the cornerstone for MCA&F operations.

MajGen Usher’s grandfather was an infantry Marine during the early 1900s. As a wandering youth in Cleveland, Private Edward G. Usher enlisted in 1902, trained at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., fought in the Philippine Insurrection, sailed in the battleship Kentucky, participated in campaigns in China and was discharged in 1906. Buried at Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego, the businessman requested that his tombstone simply read: “Edward G. Usher, U.S. Marine.”

“Both my grandfather and father [a career Marine] loved the Marine Corps and were life members of the MCA,” said MajGen Usher. “The Association meant a lot to them, and here I am, running this organization, and we’ve added a Foundation to allow us to do even more to support Marines.”

Since 1913, the Marine Corps and its Association have grown up together. In fact, the Corps controlled and staffed the MCA for 60 years before the Pentagon required that MCA become a private entity in the 1970s. Governing board meetings were held in the Marine Commandant’s office for years, and he was the senior member. Some Commandants even wanted the names of nonmember officers and those delinquent in their membership dues. Those days are long gone.

“For a century now, the MCA has stayed true to Lieutenant General John A. Lejeune’s [13th Commandant’s] vision of providing a forum for Marines of every rank to exchange ideas, preserve our heritage and develop professionally,” said General James F. Amos, the 35th and current Commandant. “The hard work of the MCA staff materially contributes to our mission and the advancement of the Corps’ objectives.”

When Lieutenant Colonel Lejeune commanded the Marine Barracks in Brooklyn, N.Y., from 1911 to 1914, he left his family to make expeditions to Panama, Veracruz, Mexico and Cuba. On Feb. 20, 1913, he sailed with the 2d Provisional Marine Brigade for Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo), a frequent jumping-off spot for Caribbean hot spots.

Two years before, the officers of a similar Marine brigade at Gitmo voted and contributed $5,000 to form the Marine Corps Association, but the action was not formalized.

On April 25, 1913, Lejeune was named head of a three-man executive committee, and the MCA was born. The goal was the professional advancement of Marines and the preservation of the Corps’ history and traditions. Those simple but vital goals remain to this day.

MajGen Edward G. Usher III, MCA&F president and CEO, far right, along with sculptor and artist, Marine veteran Mark Austin Byrd, presents the newly established MCA&F sponsored 1stLt Baldomero Lopez Honor Graduate Award for TBS honor graduates to the TBS commander, Col Dale Alford, in 2012.

MajGen Usher, a third-generation Marine, traces his Marine Corps roots to his grandfather, Edward G. Usher (left), fourth from the right, back row, in this photograph of leathernecks in Co E, 2d Bn, 1st Marine Brigade in Zambales, Philippines, circa 1902. (Photo courtesy of the Edward G. Usher Collection, MCA.)

Despite mostly imagined threats to the Marine Corps’ existence in 1913, the MCA’s founders gave it an internal mission of developing Marines. Unlike many service associations, the MCA does not have a political role and never has lobbied Congress.

“It’s my role, with the support of our fine Marines at the Office of Legislative Affairs, to keep Congress informed of our activities, achievements and challenges. I think we have a great relationship with the folks on the Hill,” said Gen Amos. “I see the MCA’s role as supporting the professional development of our Corps through the Gazette and Leatherneck, professional military education (PME), the reading program and other such activities.”

Bartlett Hall is slightly more than three miles from Quantico’s main gate. Nestled barely inside the base, the three-story red-brick building sits next to Quantico town, within easy walking distance of Little Hall, the Marine Corps University and other familiar landmarks.

“If General Lejeune could see today’s operation, he’d be amazed,” said retired MajGen Harry W. Jenkins, who heads the MCA’s Board of Governors. “We are taking care of the troops, and since we added the Foundation in 2009, we can do even more to help the troops.”

The Hulbert Award for the Marine Gunner of the Year, named after the first Marine Gunner, Henry L. Hulbert, was crafted by former Leatherneck artist and veteran Marine John Chalk. The initial trophy, presented to TBS in 2008 for display by the MCA&F CEO, MajGen Les Palm, USMC (Ret), left, is held by CWO-5 David R. Dunfee, who coordinated the development of the award for the Deputy Commandant, Plans, Policies and Operations, LtGen Richard F. Natonski, right.

LeeAnn Mitchell is the Foundation’s events planner. She coordinates 14 major events a year; many are awards dinners. The MCA&F brings in and hosts Marine honorees and their families at the awards dinners. They are popular, well-attended and growing. More than 400 people attend each dinner, and Gen and Mrs. Amos are frequent guests. Active-duty Marines attend free. Mitchell also recruits and courts the Marine-friendly corporate sponsors who help foot the bill. MCA&F staffers cheerfully do the grunt work.

Hewlett Packard laptops are ready for delivery to wounded Marines in 2011. From left: Barbara Lewandrowski, Wounded Warrior Regiment; LeeAnn Mitchell, Director, Events and Corporate Sponsorships, MCA&F, who coordinated the laptop donation; Col John L. Mayer, Commanding Officer, WWR; and Greg Lockett, Hewlett Packard.

“These dinners are the Marine Corps’ dinners, not ours. LeeAnn is their uncompensated event planner,” said Tom Esslinger, the MCA chief operating officer. A successful career lawyer, Esslinger served in Vietnam as a Marine infantry officer and joined the staff in 2008. “One general officer told me, ‘If it wasn’t for you guys paying for these dinners, we’d hand these awards out at lunchtime in the mess hall.’ ”

Shouldn’t the Marine Corps do these things? Yes, it probably should, but laws prohibit the use of appropriated money for certain things. The MCA and its Foundation fills this important gap. It always has been that way.

For example, in 1915, the Corps’ inspector general recommended that the MCA purchase flowers for Marines buried at Arlington National Cemetery. In 1918, the Association bought bronze plaques to place on Navy destroyers named after Marines.

The MCA Foundation was in its infancy when MajGen Usher took over in 2010. It now sponsors programs that help active-duty Marines and attracts the funds to pay for them. In 2012, the Foundation provided 300 unit libraries (mostly books from the Commandant’s Professional Reading List)and more than 8,000 awards to Marines in its significantly expanded Marine Excellence Awards Program.

“The money we take in goes into our programs to support Marines. If a Marine commander comes to me, and I start saying no, we’ve got a problem,” said MajGen Usher.

“We’re also not competing with other Marine organizations. I don’t want to take money away from the Scholarship Foundation or our world-class museum,” said MajGen Usher. “We’re all dedicated to support an institution that we love.

“Nonprofit doesn’t mean we can operate in a deficit. We have to make payroll, recover our costs and provide money for our programs,” said MajGen Usher. “In addition to being the Corps’ professional association, we conduct a successful retail operation. It helps us generate revenue to meet our program needs.”

MCA membership today is about 77,000, mostly active, retired and veteran Marines but with some members from other U.S. Armed Forces. The Association’s charter rules out some individuals who would join to support the Corps. With the creation of the Foundation, nonveteran Marine parents and “friends” of the Marine Corps now can get on board as members of the Foundation, helping ensure a strong MCA&F.

The policy is paying off. The Corps’ “friends” are joining and becoming leading customers in the MCA’s e-commerce trade via the Internet. People place orders with the MCA’s online store and call center in Bartlett Hall. When MajGen Usher completes a planned website improvement effort, it will be even easier to make a purchase, join the Association and Foundation and access Marine-related content.

“In retail, we’ll have a mini-Amazon.com,” predicted MajGen Jenkins. “We’re positioning ourselves to better help the troops for the rest of this century.”

The MCA&F presently has a successful Group Benefits (insurance) program and offers financial planning, banking services and other insurance products through an affinity partnership with USAA. These offerings are a steady source of assurance for Marines who want to ensure their families’ well-being should something happen.

When the well-known source of Marine uniforms and equipment, The MARINE Shop, became available after the death of its founder, retired Major Harry Elms, the MCA, led by its CEO, MajGen Les Palm, stepped in and purchased it in 2007. The popular retail uniform store on the corner of Broadway and Potomac in Quantico town was renovated and now makes it even easier for Marines to wear the best-fitted uniforms.

Master tailor Nhean Keo is one of many world-class tailors who assist Marines at the MCA&F’s The MARINE Shop in downtown Quantico, Va.

The MCA also opened a very popular retail store at MCB Camp Lejeune, N.C., built a new annex to its headquarters in Quantico and initiated a series of professional dinners, including awards dinners, and launched the Marine Corps Association Foundation during MajGen Palm’s tenure as CEO.

The MARINE Shop appeals to all grades, and with The Basic School located at Quantico, many Marine second lieutenants become career-long customers. The MARINE Shop’s expert tailors visit the U.S. Naval Academy, Officer Candidates School and several Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps units. In 1972, when the Department of Defense closed out the option of assigning active-duty personnel to military-related associations, the Marine Corps Association shifted from an organization staffed largely by active-duty Marines to a civilian work force, but the focus on supporting Marines continued to gain momentum.

Gen Louis H. Wilson, the future 26th Commandant, was the MCA’s last active-duty leader. He ordered a management study, and retired Marine Colonel Bevan G. Cass became the MCA’s first executive director. The tireless, square-jawed, crew-cut executive had to make the Association profitable in order to continue needed programs supporting the Corps.

“No longer subsidized, the MCA became a pay-as-you-go operation,” recalled retired Marine LtCol Robert W. Smith, the Gazette editor in the late 1970s. “The MCA focused on the business side, and ‘Bev’ Cass was the initial driver.”

Cass improved the MCA Bookstore, procured a printing press and shipped Marine Birthday Ball supplies to Marine units. Operating from an old temporary building near Quantico’s Butler Stadium, he set the business tone for his successors.

“Many people believed that the cost of running the MCA with civilians would be so high that we couldn’t survive. I didn’t believe it then, and I’ve been proven right,” said Gen Wilson when he retired in 1979. “The Association was worth saving to continue its work.”

The Association and the Marine Corps Gazette have been almost synonymous since the Association’s founding. Leatherneck magazine took another course to today. In 1917, two enlisted Marines received permission from Brigadier General Lejeune, the Quantico commander, to publish a paper for Marines. In time, it became Leatherneck magazine.

“While the Gazette is our professional journal, General Lejeune wanted Leatherneck to tell the Marine Corps’ story,” said retired Marine Col Walt Ford, current MCA publisher and editor of Leatherneck since 1999. “General Lejeune placed Leatherneck under the Marine Corps Institute, and both moved to Washington after he became Commandant.”

Leatherneck grew to a colorful 64-page monthly in 1926 with photos, jokes, cartoons, poetry and reports from the field. Its popularity continues to this day. In World War II, the magazine’s notoriety elevated it to a monthly circulation of 300,000. The Leatherneck Association was incorporated in 1943 when it added the professionally enriching, red-covered “Guidebook for Marines” to its offerings.

During the Vietnam War, circulation was at 200,000 monthly. The Leatherneck staff, numbering more than 100 in Washington, received a Meritorious Unit Commendation for its service during the period. The Leatherneck Association moved its offices from Henderson Hall, Arlington, Va., to Quantico in 1975, but, with the loss of its Marine active-duty staff, more dramatic change was needed.

“General Wilson appointed me to study the possibility of merging both associations in 1975 when I was a young brigadier heading the Development Center at Quantico,” recalled retired Gen Paul X. Kelley, 28th Commandant. “It was like being in the middle of two armed camps.”

The Kelley committee discovered that both associations had their own book service, magazine, insurance plan and awards program. Although more people read Leatherneck and the “Guidebook for Marines,” and its insurance program was popular, the Leatherneck Association, by merging with the Marine Corps Association, could obviously support the Corps more effectively.

The current home of the MCA&F, Bartlett Hall, aboard MCB Quantico, Va., was named for former Executive Director BGen George Bartlett and dedicated on Nov. 10, 1986.

We recommended the Leatherneck Association be merged into the MCA in 1976,” said Gen Kelley. “We did the right thing. I’m truly pleased with what our Association is doing today.” When retired BGen George L. Bartlett took over in 1979, the MCA headquarters was located in what is now Butler Hall (Building 1019), not far from Quantico’s railroad station. But this headquarters couldn’t house all of the MCA’s activities.

“Our insurance people worked out of the [top floor of the] Quantico bank, and we had six to eight storage areas scattered around,” recalled BGen Bartlett, still a go-getter at 89. “We had almost nothing in the bank, nothing in our checking account and we couldn’t afford to pay rent even if we had to.”

Operating from his hip pocket, he made things happen. He opened communications with the State Department, shipping Birthday Ball supplies to Marine embassy detachments around the world. The MCA stepped in to run the Marine Corps Marathon for eight years. Then a series of mail campaigns were launched to promote the MCA and its professional magazines to active-duty and other Marine communities. The MCA’s printing press located in Quantico town seldom stopped rolling.

With operations taking off, it was time to consolidate operations under one roof—it was time to build a permanent home.

The Kelley committee recommended that the MCA headquarters be constructed at Quantico. BGen Bartlett handled the detailed negotiations and closely supervised the building project. The building, appropriately named Bartlett Hall, was dedicated in 1986 on the Corps’ 211th Birthday.

“I’m personally thrilled, but halls should be named after heroes,” BGen Bartlett said. “We signed a 25-year lease. It was a good deal for the Corps and the Association.”

The MCA staff, now able to easily conduct staff coordination, became an even more effective team. Initially, the merger was not popular with the Leatherneck staff. Things improved immediately when BGen Bartlett’s talented MCA deputy, retired Marine Col William V. H. White, became Leatherneck’s editor.

“I did more for the Marine Corps in that Association than I ever did as a general officer on active duty. I’m proud to be a part of it,” BGen Bartlett said.

LtGen Anthony “Tony” Lukeman took over in 1989. (His son, BGen James W. Lukeman, currently commands the Second Marine Division at Camp Lejeune.) LtGen Lukeman computerized the MCA and kept the business side going, but he took pride in reading every word before both magazines were published.

“I was thrilled to be in the company of writers. There is nothing more important than informing Marines,” said the soft-spoken retired Marine.

When he departed in 1998, the Gazette staff presented LtGen Lukeman with a bronze plaque of his final Gazette editorial. “In appreciation for the 115 issues that you so diligently proofread. We thought it only appropriate to return the favor—we could find no errors in this editorial.”

“The two magazines were the most important part of my job,” LtGen Lukeman recalled. “You could be 22 or 90 years old, they bound the generations of Marines. That’s what makes us a special breed.”

Today, Leatherneck and the Marine Corps Gazette are still the most popular MCA member benefit. “Probably the majority of our members join to get the magazine[s],” said Esslinger, “but they join for other reasons as well.”

The Marine Corps Gazette has been the professional journal of Marines since 1916. Col Lejeune wrote the first article. Starting as a quarterly and becoming a permanent monthly in the mid-1940s, Marines have exchanged ideas in Gazette before every major Marine Corps advancement—amphibious operations, helicopters, maritime prepositioning, etc.

“We have an ethos of innovation, and the Marine Corps actively seeks input from Marines,” said retired Marine Col John Keenan, the professional journal’s editor.

Shortly after Gen James T. Conway became the 34th Commandant, he visited Keenan’s office. After emphasizing Gazette’s importance, Gen Conway left Keenan with this thought, “If I agree with one-half of the articles and disagree with the other half, you have it exactly right.”

Keenan reads all submissions and personally accepts or rejects most articles. When in doubt, he sends articles to the Gazette editorial board member with subject-matter expertise. The full 14-person board votes on sensitive items and all writing contest submissions.

“The Foundation is elevating our writing awards program to encourage Marines to write,” said MajGen Usher. “We’re dusting off some of the older awards and adding new ones. Winners will now receive cash and a special plaque. Some of those majors, captains and staff NCOs are on to something. We want to get some dialogue going and recognize their efforts.”

Keenan is trying to debunk the myth that Gazette is an officers’ magazine. The Gazette’s diverse active-duty audience begins at the lowest enlisted grade, grows at the NCO level and goes up to the Commandant. Enlisted Marines won several writing contests in recent years, and many had their articles published.

“We can do better this year! I challenge all Marines to ‘stretch their brains’ and submit professional articles for publication,” said Sergeant Major Micheal P. Barrett, 17th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps and a Gazette subscriber for three decades. “The articles are relevant, current and enhance cognitive fitness. Marines need to exercise their brains constantly. The Gazette helps me stretch mine, and it’s part of my monthly PME.”

One new MCA&F award is the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Writing Award that honors the top Gazette article written by an enlisted Marine. SgtMaj Barrett said that with each promotion, Marines spend more time writing, and they must learn to write clearly and persuasively.

“Our Marines need to practice and develop writing skills through daily use. This award recognizes enlisted Marines for that commitment,” he said.

Only a few young Marines read printed newspapers, and most receive their news from smartphones or tablets. The MCA is preparing for this evolution in readership. Digital editions of both Gazette and Leatherneck are available monthly for online readers, and plans are underway to make the digital content even more user-friendly for smartphone and tablet users. The focus will be on providing content attractive to members and other readers and in the format preferred.

“Our younger readers want to read online. Other readers prefer the current paper version, and some will do both. Our challenge is to accommodate everyone,” said Keenan.

Right now, about 14,000 members elected to forego the print editions, reading the digital editions online. The online-only readership will grow in the years ahead, and the magazines are making preparations to meet changing preferences.

“We’re committed to print these magazines monthly. Each will continue to have quality content and the feel of a first-class magazine,” said MajGen Usher. “At some point, there probably will be a shift from predominantly paper to digital. It will be driven by what our readers want.”

The Marine Corps and its professional Association were joined at the hip for the past 100 years. Since the MCA went private, the two have marched side by side, each having the other’s back. That journey should never end. With a recent 17-year lease, the MCA headquarters will remain at Quantico at least through mid-2026. The MCA has the freedom to support Marines in many ways today, and its new Foundation gives it potential to do even more.

What a century! But, the best is yet to come.

“The MCA supports us in many ways each year, and I’m very grateful for everything they do to make our Corps a better warfighting organization,” said Gen Amos. “The staff at MCA should feel pretty good about themselves as they reflect on their 100th anniversary.”