I delivered this second speech at Toastmasters on 7/3/7

“Hey, Dad, I wanna be a Marine”. My wife and I heard this in the summer of 2003 from our younger son, Morgan. This was the beginning of what is likely to be a 6 year journey for our family. My wife and I had some pointed questions for the recruiter. The recruiter told us that there are 3 phases to becoming a Marine. When you start talking to the Marine Corps you are called a candidate. When you get to boot camp, you’re called a recruit. And when you complete boot camp, you’ll be a Marine. I’m going to tell you about how I saw these 3 phases.

The Candidate Phase
My wife and I were surprised to hear that Morgan wanted to be a Marine. We’d never thought that Morgan had any military inclinations. His bedroom was never cleaned up to military spec. I’d heard the phrase “in the military, 5 minutes early is on time”. For Morgan, showing up on the right day is on time. Watching Morgan walk anywhere was always torturous because it looked like the video was in slow-motion.
I asked if he was aware that there was a war on. Morgan is pretty bright but he was 17 at the time and keeping up with current events wasn’t always his strong suit.
I held back on getting too worried. The previous week, Morgan wanted to be a research chemist. Before that, he wanted to teach. I’d get old early if I made plans every time Morgan announced a new career. First, Morgan does become a Marine. Second, I sometimes have lousy insights.
It was common to have 10 or 20 candidates waiting to become recruits. This could be for waiting for background checks, medical exams, and the like. A lot of them, including Morgan, were waiting to graduate high school. During this interval, they were required to attend weekly pool meetings at the recruiting office. Since they were in a pool of candidates, they were called poolees.
After finishing high school, my wife, Morgan’s girlfriend and I dropped Morgan off at Lansing. Morgan was sworn in and became a recruit.

This gets us to the Recruit Phase
He was then packed onto an airplane to go to boot camp. We weren’t to see him until he finished.
For Marines, boot camp is 13 weeks of intensive training. During this time we had no communication with him except for snail mail. Until now, the longest time that we’d been separated from Morgan had been 2 weeks at summer camp.
We’ve occasionally listened to other parents tell us that this is just like when their little darling first went to college. Please note that waiting for your child to finish boot camp is not the least bit like sending you child to college. When you send your kid to college, the kid will constantly call to complain that his laptop can’t play the latest video games, that her laundry isn’t done properly or that Jenny said something awful to Mark. With boot camp, your child’s life is entirely dominated by people who are paid to act like evil-minded sons of so-and-sos. I could say more to say on this topic but I’m not going to because it’s not very nice.
He left a message on our answering machine on his third day out. The message had been scripted by a civil servant and he sounded like a robot.
The only communication with Morgan during this period, other than the robot phone call, was thru snail mail. My wife, Morgan’s girlfriend Beth, and I each sent Morgan a letter every day. These were mostly “rah-rah, you can do it” type letters. We got our first reply in the second or third week of boot camp. It could be summarized as “Stop sending so many letters”. Morgan got his first batch of 30 some odd letters and didn’t have time to read them all. Getting that many letters also draws attention to you and evidently, that’s a bad thing with Drill Inspectors.
Boot Camp for Marines can be either in San Diego or in Parris Island in South Carolina. For Morgan, it was sunny San Diego. I’m told that the main difference is that Parris Island has more humidity and bugs. Marines refer to the San Diego graduates as ‘Hollywood Marines’. The differences seem to be minimal, and don’t seem to matter when a drill instructor is screaming in your face.
The Marines invite friends and family members to attend the boot camp graduation ceremony. We flew out, along with Beth and her mom, to stay for a week. The ceremony is spread out over 2 days but we wanted to explore the city. The first ceremonies are on Thursdays. We spent the morning watching recruits running and matching back and forth. The 4 of us would be struggling to identify Morgan from the other recruits. We took a bunch of pictures of recruits who we hoped would be Morgan. Some of them even were Morgan. On Thursdays, the ceremonies include handing out the Eagle, Globe and Anchor symbol which is to be to be attached to their hats. Receiving the Eagle, Globe and Anchor is when they stop being recruits and become Marines.

This brings us to the Marine Phase even though it’s only the second-last day of boot camp.
The following day had more ceremonies and then we could keep Morgan for 2 weeks. While Morgan had spent the previous 13 weeks learning to be on time and neat and tidy, he viewed this time as a vacation from that. He could slouch and not have a drill instructor suggest at 150 decibels that a) he shouldn’t slouch and b) that his parents hadn’t married. Morgan also got what a recruit only wishes for – enough sleep.
Although Morgan had finished boot camp and was a Marine, he still had more training to do. More combat training and then his specialty training. In Morgan’s case this was for airframe mechanics.
After training he got his orders to be stationed at an air base in Miramar, which is just north of San Diego. Morgan is still there.

The 3 phases of becoming a Marine affect the parents differently. The candidate phase had us asking a lot of questions and brought up new concerns about the future of our high-school senior. The recruit phase was nerve-wracking because we had limited communication with Morgan and we knew that he was at the mercy of some really nasty people. The Marine phase is still going on. At the moment, there is less worrying. Mainly because we view him as an adult who can take care of himself.
As an addendum to all this, I should add that since Morgan became a Marine, he’s been promoted to lance corporal and then corporal. His girlfriend Beth has since been promoted to fiancé and then wife.