DALLAS – Running into an Army recruiter at a restaurant changed – really changed – the life of lawyer Michael Brown.
Brown, 26, leaves Dallas today for Fort Benning, Ga., cutting his annual income from $120,000 to $18,000.
His impetus was a conversation this summer with Staff Sgt. Jerome Huntley.
“I had been thinking about doing it,” Brown said. “It’s on your heart and you’re thinking about doing it, and there he is.”
They talked in a Subway shop, and the next day Huntley came to Brown’s apartment to describe life in an Army special operations unit such as the Rangers or Green Berets.
Huntley said Brown’s enthusiasm eliminated any doubts about giving up his career as a lawyer.
“He was just saying he wanted something more exciting in his life,” Huntley said.
After 16 weeks of training at Fort Benning, Brown will go to Fort Campbell in Kentucky. He hopes to eventually join a special operations unit.
A recruit such as Brown is “relatively unusual,” not only because of his profession but also because of his income and age, said Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox in Kentucky.
About 98.5 percent of Army officers have a bachelor’s degree, and 40 percent of those have a master’s or a doctorate, according to the Army. But only about 5 percent of enlistees have a four-year college degree or higher.
Smith said the average recruit’s age is 21, and according to 2002 data, only 7 percent of enlistees come from households with incomes of $100,000 to $150,0000.
Brown grew up in Starkville, Miss., and attended college about 160 miles from home, in Clinton. At Mississippi College, Brown played football – outside linebacker – and earned an accounting degree. His next stop was law school at the University of North Carolina. He settled on Dallas as the place he wanted to practice construction and personal injury defense law.
Approaching Huntley that July day was no spur of the moment decision, Brown said. It was something that built for a long time. As a boy, he loved to play with toy soldiers, and as a young adult he thought about a career in the military. In the end, he followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, both lawyers.
After Brown got to Dallas, he started contemplating the switch.
“The law may not be exactly what I want to do – the military’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” he said.
Brown, who is single, said he misses being on the football field building a camaraderie with a group of guys.
“I wanted to serve the country, too,” he said. “That was something that really interested me with the special forces or Rangers. You give all your time to do that. The bond that you have with that group of guys was something that I didn’t feel.”
The possibility of being sent to war didn’t stop him from joining.
“I want to go,” Brown said. “That’s really part of the reason that I’m signing up. You’re ready to go out there and do what you can for the country.”
“My mom just realized that that’s what I really wanted to do,” he said. “Dad didn’t come around till I said it’s already done. He said, ‘All right, then I’m behind it.’”
Brown’s mother, Patsy Holeman, 53, of Madison, Miss., said Brown told her about a year ago that he still wanted to join the military.
“He was still searching, still looking,” she said. “He just kept saying, ‘This is something I’ve got to do. I’ve always had this in the back of my mind. I don’t want to be 10 to 20 years down the road saying I didn’t do it.’”
Associated Press
Michael Brown (left) meets with Army recruiter Staff Sgt. Jerome Huntley in Dallas.
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