And Then There's Army Strong!

In the morning James is driving away. Yes, he's even taking all his socks and Legos -- but the Legos aren't for James. James is going to visit his big brother Andy in Dayton, Ohio before he reports to Fort Knox, KY. The Legos are for the granddaughter.

Two years ago James (while still a college student) went to Army Airborne School at Fort Benning, GA. The third and final week of jump school is called "jump week", when the trainees complete five parachute jumps. On his third jump James's eyeglasses were blown off his face when he exited the aircraft, so his fourth jump was from a fuzzy-looking airplane, and he landed on a very fuzzy world. Amazingly, the morning after that fourth jump a sergeant called out to the troops, asking if anyone had misplaced some spectacles. Sure enough the sergeant had somehow come across James's specs in the tall dry grass of that mile-long drop zone.

But prior to that fourth jump, while spectacle-less James was waiting to board a C-130 for that second jump, someone (unbeknownst to James) had filmed him and his fellow trainees in the hangar at Lawson Army Air Field. Perhaps you're thinking, "So if this filming was undetected by your visually impaired son, how do you know the filming happened?"

Well, I'm glad you asked. As always, there's a story behind this.

It so happened that few months after James completed Airborne School we were in a movie theater, watching those advertisements they play before the start of the film. This really great Army recruiting short appeared on screen. It had a really catchy little tune and inspiring pictures. We were impressed with how well produced the ad was. We later found the ad on YouTube and played it over and over and over. James said he thought he recognized one of the people in the add, so he did a freeze-frame and sure enough, this little lady in a helmet who turns her head to look at the camera was someone he'd attended Airborne School with. And upon studying the other folks in the frame he recognized a couple of his other buddies from Airborne School.

And then (surprise! surprise!) he recognized himself ... and in the film he's not wearing the glasses he wore while at Airborne School. So without any doubt, that two second clip of the Army recruiting ad was filmed on June 21st, 2006 -- between James's third and fourth jumps.

Here's the screen-capture from James's two seconds of fame:

And here's the entire recruiting film. (If you want to freeze the frame yourself, the shot of James and his buddies comes up about a minute into the ad, right after the dust storm.)



So despite James's just starting his military career, he's appeared in an Army recruiting film for well over a year now.