A chance to escape drives some to enlist

SEDALIA, Mo. -- Sgt. Jay Key stands in the middle of the car lot, beside a salesman, among the neat rows of polished Mitsubishis.

He isn't looking to buy. This is just one in a series of stops to make his face familiar and his mission clear.

Key is an Army recruiter, charged with selling the service even as war rages and a death toll mounts, standing shoulder to shoulder with a man who need only trumpet the likes of a clutchless shift and aluminum rims.

It's not an easy sell. For the year ending Sept. 30, the Army was 6,627 recruits below its goal. The Army National Guard and Reserve did even worse.

Yet here in Sedalia, there is no deficit.

The recruitment station here exceeded its annual goal of 58 soldiers by three. The Army's 5th Battalion, which includes 295 recruiting stations in Missouri and 10 other states in America's vast middle, missed its goal for the year -- but was still the top-ranked battalion.

"We hear all the bad stories. We hear recruiting is down," said Key. "But we don't see it here."

There is no single explanation for why Key and his colleagues are so successful. But if you follow them as they make their rounds in Missouri's small towns, you'll hear certain refrains: They need the money, they seek an escape from dead-end lives in dead-end towns, they hew to a kind of heartland patriotism.

When 24-year-old Key signed up six years ago, many of the young men at his side were poor, like he was. Now things are different.

"We got everything from beauty pageant queens, car salesmen, unemployed, college grads, children of doctors," he said. "Everybody joins for their own reason."

Take U.S. 50 east from Sedalia and hang a left on Highway 5. You'll hit the town of Bunceton, and 19-year-old Robert Farris says you'll see why he left.

The railroad left town decades ago, and dreams went with it. Prosperity elsewhere drew many folks away. Those who stayed -- 348 at last count -- mostly commute to factory jobs in surrounding towns. The homes here are unpretentious, the downtown full of deserted storefronts.

After graduating last May, Farris and three others in his graduating class of 17 decided to join the military.

"We need to do something with our life," Farris said. "And this is the only thing we got going for us."

Farris remembers changing in the locker room on Sept. 11, 2001, after hearing the awful news, and he was so angry. He always was patriotic, but the terrorist attacks increased his ardor.

As high school came to a close, classmates enlisted, but Farris hoped to go to school for auto collision repair. The program was already full and Farris wasn't willing to wait.

"I said, 'Forget it,'" he remembered. "'I'm joining the military.'"

---

Deanna Griffith is 34 with big blue eyes and soft features beginning to show markings of age. She thinks the military can turn her life around.

Griffith thought about enlisting out of high school, but a war was on in the Persian Gulf and her Army drill sergeant father wasn't keen on the idea.

Life happened. She married an Army man, had two kids and assumed a series of low-paying jobs -- gas station attendant, deli supervisor, Wal-Mart stock person. Somehow, that youthful confidence that told her she surely could serve her country had slipped away.

More than anything else, it's that confidence, that pride, that she hopes the military will help her regain.

There is the money, too.

Griffith's husband was injured and left the service and they found their way to Warrensburg, 50-some miles southeast of Kansas City. She eventually took a $9-an-hour job at Whiteman Air Force Base's commissary; her husband found work at a railyard in North Kansas City, then at a commercial battery company.

Five years ago, the couple declared bankruptcy. Last year, they made less than $24,000. They struggled to make their $322 monthly mortgage payment and to feed their children.

They lost their house and car and even had to sell the three Pomeranians they were breeding. The family is now living in a mobile home parked on property owned by Griffith's parents.

"I look at it as an opportunity for me, for my whole family, to change our whole lives," she said before beginning basic training at Fort Leonard Wood.

Griffith's father lifted his family out of poverty. He was one of 14 children raised by Griffith's grandparents on a dirt farm in Tennessee and landed in the Army after some teenage transgressions.

"My mom's said to me many times, 'If it wasn't for the Army, who knows where we would be.' The Army saved my dad's life," Griffith said. "I know it can be done. I know you can change your life."

---

Ask Jonathan Churchwell about the type of people who sign up to serve and his answer is simple. There are guys like his brother, who lives to defend the country. And there are guys like Jonathan who think, "Hey, I can get money? Cool."

He isn't shy about his motivation. Churchwell is joining the military so he can go to college and make a living in animation. He says his parents are supportive.

"They were like, 'Yeah, join the military because we're not paying for school,"' he said. "My whole family is dirt poor. Most of them are on welfare."

In Warrensburg, Churchwell's home, the poverty rate is about twice the national average. The 19-year-old lives there in a small, white ranch that doesn't look like it could brave much of a storm. Inside, ferrets play in a large cage in the living room, where macrame hangs, fish tanks gurgle and walls are covered with pictures of uniformed men.

He will be up there soon. But he doesn't expect it will change him.

"I'm not going to get a tattoo with an American flag on it like my brother," he said. "But this is my home, it's where I lay my head at night. I'll fight for it, I guess."

---

It was California, 1998, but the details beyond that are a bit murky. What Tia Bond does remember is exactly how she felt as she watched her brother graduate with his fellow Marines.

"Just watching them -- the pride that they had -- made me think that's something I might like to do," she said.

She is 20, living a stone's throw from the Army recruitment center in Warrensburg. She and her roommate were renting a movie at Blockbuster one Saturday last spring when a recruiter approached them.

Both decided to enlist.

"I think it'll instill a better sense of pride and self-confidence and that kind of stuff," Bond said.

For joining the reserves, Bond is to receive a $7,000 sign-on bonus and $20,000 in school loan repayment. She said that didn't matter, though.

"They could just pay me minimum wage, whatever, and I'd still go," she said. "It's just like a personal thing that I want to serve my country."

It is a chance to leave, too -- a chance she's wanted for a long time.

"I've lived here my whole life. The military will give me the option of at least getting away for a while," she said. "I'm not looking forward to saying goodbye to my family and that's about the only thing I can honestly say I'm not looking forward to."

---

Pfc. Glenn Stanley leans against a wall at the Military Entrance Process Station in Kansas City, alone, laid-back and calm. Today is the start of his dream. He heads out for basic training, convinced he could save thousands of lives in the Special Forces.

He is patriotic, no doubt -- a supporter of the president, offended by those who drive imported cars. But he doesn't deny money has had a role in his decision.

"Finance has been quite a big influence. They really take care of their soldiers," he said. "I see so many people out there with dead-end jobs. They work real hard to make ends meet. I just don't want to do that."

At 17, Stanley has a slight build, very white sneakers and just a bit of hair poking from his chin. He finished high school in Kansas City, Kan., in three years and was too young to enlist without his mother's approval. She cried, but agreed.

He's known for years this is what he wanted to do.

"You'd see people and you'd just want to grow up and be just like them," he said. "You hear of people saving lives and it sounded like the perfect thing to do."

---

He says he is not as patriotic as perhaps a soldier should be. Jason Brooks is enlisting for adventure.

Brooks admits his life is comfortable in Clinton, a small town due south of Warrensburg. His yellow motorcycle is parked in the driveway of his small beige house, his room equipped with a laptop and electronics, his frame draped with neat preppy clothes. But he wants more.

"In this town, what is there for me?" the 18-year-old asked. "No adventure, no benefits."

Brooks comes from a military family. His father was in the Army; so was his mom. She was serving in Iraq when he broke the news by e-mail that he was considering enlisting.

"I said, 'No, no, no, no, no, no,"' recalled his mother, Krista Seiner. "I said, 'You're going to come back in a body bag."'

But her son is more concerned about what would happen if he didn't join.

"A fear of not succeeding in the real world -- that's one of the things I think this will help me with," he said. "My classmates, a lot of them are just not doing anything. They don't really have any plans."

Many of Brooks' friends are headed to college. He considered that, too, but isn't regretful.

"I don't think I'm going to miss anything," he said. "While they're partying, I'm going to be making a career and a life for myself."

---

Had recruits from Sedalia or Bunceton -- or other small towns across the vast swath of middle America that supplies so many of the troops -- been brought up elsewhere, under different circumstances, with other opportunities, there's no telling if they'd enlist.

But this is their world. And perhaps most importantly, this is a world that -- unlike much of the rest of post-Vietnam America -- never disdained the military.

You can see it in the way the 24-year-old recruiter, Jay Key, is received as he goes about his business. He goes to blood drives and graduation parties, shares beers with schoolteachers and chats with mechanics, hangs out at a Masonic lodge and enters pool tournaments -- anything to make contact with people who can feed him potential recruits.

"I don't think there's a building in town I haven't been in," he said.

People in town know Key -- they seem to know all the uniformed men who call this home. They stop them to chat, offer them food, offer a friendly nod.

And as he rides around, Key says it's so evident why he's found so many young men and women willing to join: "Everybody's pretty proud of us out here."

"Out here," he said, "it's almost like royalty."