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Military academy students share adventures at Valley high schools
The two Boardman High alumni have five-year military obligations after graduating.
BOARDMAN — Naval Academy Midshipman Solomon Lu and U.S. Military Academy Cadet Elliot Thomas spent their Thanksgiving vacations home doing more than eating turkey and visiting family and friends.
The Boardman High School graduates and future U.S. military leaders also completed information missions for their respective military schools by sharing their experiences and opportunities with area high school students.
Interviewed together at The Vindicator, they said they had visited several schools, including their alma mater.
“It’s not recruiting. I talk about the opportunities and the application process,” said Lu, son of Navy Reserve Capt. David and Joy Lu of Boardman.
Midshipman 2nd Class Lu, 20, a 2007 Boardman graduate, was accepted at Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine through Youngstown State University, but chose the Navy path instead.
“I plan to become a Navy doctor, just like my dad,” he said.
His father, an internist whose practice is at the Youngstown Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic, is on active duty stationed at the Army’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany.
Lu said he is seriously considering a career in the Navy, and said if he is not accepted to medical school in the Navy, he will serve in the submarine division for five years and then go to medical school.
They have minimum five-year military obligations after graduating from their academies.
“I love the academy,” said Thomas, also 20, a son of Melvin and Carolyn Thomas of Boardman, “but, definitely not ‘plebe’ year. You are kind of locked down,” said Thomas.
The plebe year is the first year at the academies.
Lu described his “plebe” year as “constant low-level stress.”
However, Cadet 3rd Class Cpl. Thomas, a 2008 Boardman graduate, said now that he is in his second year at the academy “the world has opened up.”
“The academics step up a little bit, but there is a lot more free time,” he said.
During plebe year, only three hours a day were “protected” for study, said Lu, who is a midshipman group leader in naval warfare. He said the academy offers many opportunities, such as summer missions aboard various types of ships.
Lu, who was in the band and orchestra in high school, president of the Science Club and a member of the Speech and Destination Imagination teams, has participated in intramural racquetball, boxing and karate while at the academy.
At Boardman, Thomas was a member of the speech and debate teams, a captain of the track and cross country teams, a member of National Honor Society.
When he talks to high school students, Thomas said he tells them about the opportunities he receives as a cadet, including unfurling the U.S. flag at a New York Yankees baseball game and attending air assault school, where he learned to repel out of a helicopter.
The academics are definitely challenging, but the classes are small, and professors go out of their way to make themselves available to students, he said.
Military professors also tell war stories, or in Lu’s case, sea stories.
There is regimentation at the academies, they said.
“You pretty much know when things are going to happen,” Thomas said.
“You don’t have to worry about anything but academics,” Lu said.
“I want to become a doctor, but I can always do that. I don’t regret choosing the Naval Academy. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said.
“I really care about serving the nation,” said Thomas explaining why he accepted an appointment to the military academy.
“At the same time, I’m getting a world-class education,” he said.
alcorn@vindy.com