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Valley soldier accentuates the positive
YOUNGSTOWN
A soldier who is contemplating retirement in September after 20 years of military service, including two back-to-back 14-month tours of duty in Iraq and one 12-month tour in Afghanistan, wants Americans to have a positive view of this nation’s role in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
“I hear a lot of negativity sometimes. It seems like the news focuses on negative stuff, but I don’t see us doing any of the bad stuff that they say. All we’re doing is trying to make the place better,” said Army 1st Sgt. Michael Sullivan during a family reunion Sunday at his mother’s West Side residence.
“All I’ve done the whole time I’ve been over there is try to make those places a better place. I know guys work really hard to make it better, and it kind of hurts me when I hear the negatives,” he added.
A Youngstown native and a 1989 Chaney High School graduate, Sullivan joined the Army in 1992 and resides with his wife, Stacey, and their children, Michael, 14; Sean, 13; and Emily, 8, at the home base of his unit — the Army’s 10th Mountain Division in Fort Drum, N.Y.
Sullivan brought with him to the reunion the 10th Mountain Division’s flag, which bears the division’s slogan: “Climb to glory.”
The 42-year-old artilleryman, who returned from Afghanistan at the end of March, was a construction laborer for several years before he joined the Army.
At Chaney, his classmates rated him as “most likely to be late for work.” Sullivan said the Army drastically changed that by giving him discipline and structure. “You have to be early and you can’t be late” while serving in the military, he observed.
“I can’t say anything but good things about the military,” he added.
Initially, Sullivan said he planned to be a soldier temporarily, but he made a career of the Army because, he said, “I just enjoyed the camaraderie of being with other soldiers, and a lot of pride came from it.”
Consistent with the jargon of his Army radio communications as an artilleryman, Sullivan often says “roger,” rather than “yes,” when answering questions in the affirmative.
Sullivan has received a Purple Heart, three bronze stars, four Army commendation medals and nine Army achievement medals.
Military service runs in Sullivan’s family. His grandfathers served in the military during World War II, and his father served in Germany during the Vietnam War era.
Sullivan has made many moves during his Army career, having lived in Massachusetts, Hawaii, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Germany, as well as Fort Drum, N.Y. “I got to travel the world,” he said.
Although that has required many moves for his children, he said they’ve benefited from experiencing the rich cultural diversity of the places they’ve lived. “They can go somewhere and make friends really quickly,” he said.
For the first time in many years, all three Fort Drum-based brigades of the 10th Mountain Division are home after multiple overseas deployments, Sullivan noted.
Although she’s proud of his military service, Sullivan’s mother, Martha Drozdik, said she’d like him to retire from the Army this year and become a game warden or police officer, preferably somewhere in the Youngstown area.
If he retires this year, Sullivan agreed that he would want to pursue one of those occupations.
Drozdik said her “main concern” is that her son not risk another overseas deployment to a war zone. “I don’t want him to go back to any of those places again,” she concluded.