It was a miserable January. Every day, the local Chicago news stations warned of snow, sleet, and freezing fog, and on Jan. 16, 2009, the city suffered a record low temperature of -24 degrees Fahrenheit. Meteorologists pleaded for people to stay inside; outside, Chicago’s notorious winds turned the city into a gray and white blur.
A few miles north, on the Lake Michigan shore, snow covered the U.S. Navy’s Recruit Training Command Great Lakes. The compound, known simply as “Boot Camp,” is the Navy’s only recruit training facility, and that day, white mounds covered the first-floor windows of the imposing administration building, with its tall, collegiate clock tower.
Paul Menard shivered, his feet squeaking against the snow, as he marched across the vast grounds. What was he doing there? Today, Menard works as a Brentwood Engineering Technician, but in 2009, he was 35 years old. That made him almost twice the age of his fellow recruits.
“I was the oldest person there,” he said. “I was older than my chief. I was the oldest in the room, out of all the jobs represented.”
Had he made a mistake, enlisting so late in life? He missed his family, and as he trained in the icy cold, hearing everyone refer to him as “Pops,” he wondered if he’d make it. Would he graduate?
“Those first couple of weeks, it was all about getting acclimated,” he said.
Menard grew up in a military family – his grandfather, father, and uncle all served. When he graduated high school, an 18-year-old Menard planned to continue this family tradition.
“In 1991, I tried to enlist in the Marine Corps,” he said. “But in 1989, I was in an accident, and I was in a coma for nine days. They wouldn’t let me enlist that soon. They wanted ten years after the accident.”
Instead of joining the military, Menard spent the next 16 years working as an auto mechanic or in construction. He got married, had a few kids, and eventually figured his time for enlisting had passed.
“But then my wife got sick a couple of years ago,” he said. “Our insurance wasn’t what we needed. I was like, ‘You know what? The military has really good insurance.’”
With his background in construction, Menard enlisted as a reservist in the SeaBees – the Naval Construction Force. He shipped off to Boot Camp in Northern Chicago that January, and as he struggled to keep up with 18- and 19-year-olds on the obstacle courses, he worried he’d made a mistake.
Fifteen years later, he knows it was the right decision. The insurance was a “God send” for his wife, but he also discovered, as one of the last Americans to leave Afghanistan, what he really wanted to do with his life.
