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thedrifter
06-13-09, 07:37 AM
Graduation from North will be teen’s second

BY RYAN JONES
The Dispatch

Published: Friday, June 12, 2009 at 2:20 p.m.



Somewhere among the excited crowd of black-robed North Davidson High School graduates Saturday will be a young man who stands just a little taller than the rest.

Sporting a military-style crew cut, 18-year-old Jordan Perrell will walk across the graduation stage for the second time this month. The first was on a stage at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island, S.C., after he completed 13 weeks of boot camp basic training. He graduated June 5 along with 459 men and women.

“I knew from freshman year I wanted to be in the military,” Perrell said. “Once I was able to enlist at 17 I did. I wanted to be able to serve my country.”

With enough credits to apply for early graduation, Perrell left North Davidson in January to join the Marine Corps. His parents, Rodney and Beth Perrell, had mixed reactions to his decision to leave high school in such a non-traditional way.

“My mother was all for it,” he said. “My dad wasn’t so much excited for me to go, but he respected my decision and knew the Marine Corps would be the best thing for me.”

Now Perrell is returning to Davidson County to graduate with his classmates in the official ceremony at St. Peter’s World Outreach Center in Winston-Salem.

“I really don’t feel like I missed out on much considering Davidson County is such a small place, and I’ve lived here all my life,” he said.

But he is excited to return with what he hopes is a contagious new, positive outlook on the military and life in general.

“Most people have a negative opinion of the Marine Corps,” he said. “(But) the Marine Corps is a great place to be, and it’s changed me for the better. I want my peers to see what the Marine Corps has done for me and respect me and look up to me for what I’m doing.

“I believe graduating early and going through boot camp was a smart choice because I feel the longer I would have waited, the more I would have missed out on (in life).”

Perrell settled on the Marines after a good friend who had recently enlisted took him to a recruitment function in 2006.

“Just to see how the Marines acted, it just appealed to me,” he said. “I knew from then on that being a U.S. Marine was something I wanted to do.”

With a long line of family members in service — two uncles, one in the Army and one in the Navy, and two cousins in the Marines — Perrell said he was proud to join the tradition and leave the civilian world behind. Originally, he had planned to be a pilot, but poor eyesight forced him to consider combat engineering.

Perrell will leave Davidson County again Tuesday to complete Marine combat training at Camp Geiger in North Carolina. After 22 days there, he will go to either Camp Lejeune on the coast or to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri to begin training for his job as a combat engineer.

Before leaving, Perrell says he will spend his time with family and trying to keep in shape — he lost about 30 pounds in boot camp. He wants to make sure his brother, Chris, 20, and sister, Ashley, 15, see him as a positive influence.

With plans to receive a bachelor’s degree in United States history, Perrell will join the 17 percent of active duty Marines who take advantage of the military’s tuition assistance program, which pays 100 percent of tuition costs for service members.

“I’m a big history buff. I love history,” he said, “just learning how our country came to be and how the military and Marine Corps has formed our country into how it is today.”

Though he plans to finish college, Perrell said he is content to make the Marine Corps a career.

“I just can’t picture myself doing anything else,” he said.

Ryan Jones can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 227, or at ryan.jones@the-dispatch.com.

Ellie