Killeen resident, Joshua Missouri, 40, is a recently-appointed director of The Ted & Diane Connell Center for Military and Veterans Services at Texas A&M University-Central Texas. And, given his appreciable report of service in each the armed forces and better training, it’s straightforward to see how effectively he suits into his new place.
It has been 16 years since his service within the U.S. Navy concluded, and nonetheless, each his demeanor and bodily look means that the self-discipline and the athleticism as soon as required of him in service is greater than what could have been developed whereas there.
Looking at his rapid and prolonged household means that these traits have all the time been an element of who he’s – maybe fairly actually, handed down from one era to the subsequent in the identical means a father’s crimson hair favors his offspring or a mom’s dimple re-emerges on her daughter’s cheek.
“My grandfather served in the Army, and so did my uncles and one aunt,” he stated. “Another aunt served in the Air Force, and cousins served in the Marine Corps. Both my brother and I served in the Navy.”
Raised by Janie and James Missouri in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he by no means doubted that he would go to school, he says. His mom was the primary in her household to go to school, attending the storied Stillman College, and incomes her undergraduate diploma in elementary training.
His father was a technician with the state’s energy firm and the minister of a neighborhood church. Both instilled of their kids a resolute obligation earned by their very own life expertise. As a outcome, he grew up not simply listening to in regards to the significance of service however seeing it of their on a regular basis phrases and deeds.
Both mother and father, he defined, grew up within the Jim Crow period within the Deep South, but neither had surrendered their self-worth, dignity, or dedication to their communities. If something, he stated, their instance, instilled in him an irrevocable instance of what a life of service meant. Of what his can be.
“Part of my father’s job was to go door to door to collect payment for residential electricity,” he stated. “From time to time, he would find someone who was about to be disconnected for lack of payment, and when he could, he would go into his own pocket to help them.”
By the time he graduated from highschool, he says, it was his flip. He enlisted within the U.S. Navy “to see the world,” he laughed. But, he added, the reality is that the world got here to see him.
He grew to become an aviation electronics technician, second class, ultimately incomes the rank of an E5.
“I didn’t even know what a flight deck was,” he stated, with a twinge of nostalgia, a contact of Cheshire Cat smile crossing his face, a nod, maybe to his personal naivete as a younger sailor.
During 5 years of service, he was deployed fulfilling orders to report back to the Middle East, Greece, Rome, Naples, Dubai, and Japan at Marine Corps Air Station Iwkuni three miles from the Nishiki River Delta.
“Deploying by sea taught me how insignificant I was,” he stated. “And deploying by land showed me how large countries are and how humbling life can be.”
His service, he says, was constructed on his mother and father’ instance, and meant to be purposeful. It was translated seamlessly into his character when, his navy obligations fulfilled, he returned to his residence state to pursue his undergraduate diploma.
He attended the University of South Alabama, double majoring in legal justice and political science and significantly contemplated legislation college.
“I had finished my undergraduate degree, and I was in graduate school,” he stated. “I had earned an assistantship and was responsible for a cohort of 150 ‘at-risk’ undergraduate students. That one thing would have as much impact on me as anything.”
Teaching the college’s first-year expertise programs, his job was to shepherd his cohort via their instructional journey. He was half minister, half coach, half drill sergeant, half cheerleader, half disciplinarian, and greatest of all, ninety % of his cohort made it.
“Work like that in higher education is so important,” he defined. “The factors that determine a student’s ‘at risk’ status can be a combination of one or more things. But mostly, it means there may be economic or family factors that might make their first year more challenging than it is for students without those elements in their life. I needed to be the counterbalance to all of that.”
Rather than discover himself intimidated by the accountability, Missouri thrived. The son of a technician and minister and a trainer, it appeared, had found a solution to leverage his innate inclination to be off service to others in all of the ways in which mattered.
From that first success, he rose within the ranks, promoted to an admissions officer for worldwide college students, a new pupil orientation coordinator, and at last, director of pupil veterans.
In a jovial second, Missouri admits that his expertise in increased training introduced him greater than a profession; it was additionally the place he would meet, and later marry, his future spouse. The second he first noticed her, he says, he was all in. She, alternatively, he says, took slightly convincing.
“I still remember the first time I saw her,” he stated, his onyx eyes twinkling with equal components of mischief and nostalgia. “I just remember thinking that I had never seen anyone so pretty in my whole life.”
Today, he and his spouse, Clair, are the proud mother and father of two women, aged 14 and 4, and all have develop into an element of the neighborhood in a method or one other. His daughters attend the native elementary and center college, and his spouse works in monetary services.
The girls in his life, he admits, will all the time be the muse of his life, he says. As will the chance to work with servicemen and ladies pursuing their training.
“When I was a student, I knew that getting my degree was the key to the rest of my life that wasn’t spent in military service,” he stated.
He has been with A&M-Central Texas since June 2022, and, he says, he cherished it from the second he noticed the job posted on-line – although he had by no means been to Texas.
“I took a deep dive into the Central Texas community, and, of course, I felt right at home so close to a U.S. Army post,” he stated.
“And all the help I had as a former sailor returning to get my degree was both an inspiration and a safety net that I could rely on,” he stated. “I want to show them that pursuing their degree has purpose and that we are all here to support them, and inspire them, and see them through to the finish line.”
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