When I was being court martialed for a crime I never committed, I had people turn their shoulder to me. I had people talk shit about me to friends, family, even some people on here on other online forums. Thankfully, I was found not guilty of the serious stuff, but found guilty of the typical malicious overcharging that the JAG Corps likes to do. During the sentencing phase of my court martial the best squadron commander I ever had, now O-6, wrote a letter to the panel saying:
”People are not the sum of their mistakes.”
After my discharge board, and being separated less than four years from retirement, I was the lowest of the low. I had senior Enlisted, Officers, JAGs tell me that I would never amount to anything. No one would ever give me a job due to a court martial conviction, etc. I even had a FGO that told me I should just kill myself now instead of making my family go through pain of watching me to turn into a homeless drug addict statistic. I thought about it, and almost did it. But I remembered that saying my former commander said. I decided I wasn’t going to let my mistakes define me.
This May I’m graduating from Georgetown with my Masters in Cybersecurity. I just was accepted into an aviation and space doctoral program at Oklahoma State. All paid for by the VA’s Voc Rehab program. I make way more money now than I did as a MSgt working in the KC-46 program as a contractor. I even have a security clearance. What I learned along the way was not just resilience, but I was humbled. I learned a hard lesson that your life can be taken away from you, either by the judicial system, or by those who doubt you so much that you start to doubt yourself. But in the end, you are not the sum of your mistakes, regardless of whom you are. I’m not religious, though I grew up Catholic, but to add onto that quote from my former commander is:
2 Timothy 4:7
”I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith."
To those of you who had the honor of being a commander, and allowed people to rebound from their mistakes, thank you. You’re appreciated more than you’ll ever know.