 Every soldier has a story. My story started in August of 1990. I decided to join the Army. The intent was to stay in the Army for just a couple years and go to college. It turned into a love of my life, and I've spent 31 years serving our nation with soldiers. Soldiers from every walk of life, from every place on the earth, with a common mission and a common goal. Service. There wasn't a lot of work in East Tennessee, and I moved around trying to find other employment, but it just didn't work out. My mom's older brother retired from the Army as a first sergeant. He had three tours in Vietnam, and he was a great influence on me. And eventually, all past led to the military. My late uncle, Daryl Sol, he was my inspiration. My childhood hero. I had him on a pedestal growing up. He was an attorney back in Phoenix, and prior to that, he was also enlisted in the Army. He was in the 82nd Airborne. So I joined primarily to take care of my family. I already had two kiddos at the time, and I was fresh out of college. It was kind of difficult to find a job. I knew I wanted to be a paralegal. I knew I wanted to work in the public sector somehow and give back to my community, to the country, and support my family at the same time. So the Army provided that opportunity, and I jumped at it. Back in Ivory Coast, I was planning to join the Army. The country fell into war, and the school was shut down for a year, and I won the Green Card lottery. When I came here in 2013, it was hard for me to join straight to the military because I had to learn and speak a little bit English. I spent a year learning English, so I went and spoke to a recruiter. Then he was kind of giving me all this, joining the Army. Then the Army would be able to pay for your school and give you insurance yourself, your family. And it popped up in my mind, wow, that's what I want. I didn't know how I was going to afford college. I got a scholarship through ROTC. The initial plan was to do four years in the Army and then go on with my life. Here I am 10 years later and still loving what I did. But it is kind of cool to say, hey, I was the first one to go and do this, and now I have two young boys. I have a five-year-old and a three-year-old, and they run around my uniform at night and tell me that they want to be in the Army just like Daddy. My mom had went to the Merchant Marine Academy, and her father went to West Point. I ended up picking West Point. My mom was class of 1989. My grandfather, he graduated West Point in 1965, so he graduated and his entire class went immediately to Airborne Ranger and then to Vietnam. I could walk him around West Point in 2015, and he'd walk around and say, that's the same building that I did in history. That piece and the legacy there was impressive, and I'm very happy to be a small part of it.