Army Maj. Cort J. Hunt, commander of the Military Entrance Processing Station in downtown Denver, gives me a call. You need to see what’s happening here, he says. It’s pretty amazing.
The major is not prone to hyperbole. Oh, he loves the armed services, and he’ll make a sales pitch every chance he gets, but he’s a straight shooter, now in his third and final year as the MEPS commander.
MEPS is what its name advertises, a regional processing center for military recruits. It’s one of those unseen universes existing beneath the noses of most of us who live or work in downtown Denver. You might walk by it every day and never know that inside young recruits are pledging to defend the Constitution of the United States.
Recruits are constantly coming in and out of the place, preparing for this next phase of their lives. In that way, MEPS is a world constantly refreshing itself, a place of beginnings. These days, the world is churning, which is why Hunt calls.
In March, 1,167 recruits have finalized their enlistments. Last March, 879 enlisted were processed.
What’s typical during winter? I ask the major. It’s Monday. We’re in his office.
“Maybe 20 a day,” he says.
How many today?
He makes a call, turns back to me. “Eighty on the floor today. Sixteen shippers and 64 DEPpers.” Sixteen shipping out that day and 64 signing up under the delayed enlistment program, which pushes their date to report back by as much as a year.
Every branch is ahead of its regional monthly enlistment goals. The Marines are at 86 recruits, over by eight; the Army is at 339, over by 75.
It should be no surprise that the economy is a factor. “It’s not like a lot of kids have lost their 401(k)s, but I think the uncertainty, the not knowing what the economy will bring in the next months, is playing a role,” Hunt says. “They were probably already thinking military, but the economy pushed them one step closer to doing what they were going to do anyway.”
That description might fit Tom Guenther, 39, of Parker. He worked in the mortgage and financial industry, and we all know what happened to that. The husband and father joined the Navy Reserve looking for medical training. “This is just more of a stable base in my mind, especially in the times we’re in now,” he tells me. “But military service was always in the back of my mind.”
What Hunt is not yet seeing are people coming through the door who have never contemplated military service, who are driven to enlistment because they can find nothing else. To him, the numbers he’s seeing now suggest opportunity — good benefits, stable employment, the new GI Bill, service to country — rather than desperation.
“It’s a good news story,” he says. Good for recruit, for military, for country.
What I find here, what overshadows the economy and what I am always reminded of when I come here, is how relatively few families share the responsibility and risk of military service and how single families do so generation after generation.
Here’s Army Reserve recruit Carla Gardener, 37, of Colorado Springs. She has a good job. She tells me her father was an Army soldier who served in Vietnam, won two Purple Hearts and is 100 percent disabled. Her husband is an Army chief warrant officer nearing 20 years of service. Her 17-year-old daughter plans to enlist. Her 15-year-old son is in ROTC.
“I have been wanting this since I was 19 years old,” she says. “And now, it’s my time. My turn. I can look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘Wow, I’m proud of you.’ ”
Here, too, is Benjamin McNamara, 23. He is standing in a line of enlisted men outside the Custom House getting ready to board a van for the airport. He hugs Courtney McNamara, his wife of not quite three months.
Her father is active-duty Air Force. Her grandfather is retired Air Force. Her brother-in-law is active-duty Air Force. Ben’s grandfather is a retired Air Force colonel. His younger brother is active-duty Army.
Courtney cups Ben’s face in her hands, and he kisses her. She tries not to cry in front of him, but as soon as he’s in the van with its tinted window so dark on this cloudy day that we can’t see inside, she turns to her mother, Laura Wilks, and tears come.
She cries as we wave goodbye. She cries as I ask a question. Ben must have been watching her until she disappeared from view because not 3 minutes pass before he texts her: “Please don’t cry.”
Oh, she says, it’s so hard. She wipes her eyes. Her mother hugs her, and they recount the family history of service. “We’re an Air Force family,” she says, and mother and daughter walk away.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-1416 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
