Staff Writer
CARIBOU — In a graduation ceremony held on Jan. 24, 13 youths made the transition from the County Patriot Young Marines recruits to Young Marines. Allison Burke earned the award of Honor Recruit and Colton Conley earned the Gung-ho award.
Newly graduated Young Marines and Young Marine Recruits attended the graduation ceremony on Jan. 24. Graduates included Christopher Alves, Allisen Burke, Mitchell Cannon, Joseph Canwell, Colton Conley, Dylan Fulton, Shawn Gagnon, Riley Hall, Robert Hall, Gary Hewitt III, Joseph Alves, Zackary Lavway, and Jonathon Pratt. Young Marine Recruits include Austin Ayotte, Brad Ayotte, Bonnie Corey, Erica Corey, Kaleb Donovan, Dade Engstrom, Samantha Fisher, Kyle Kilcollins, Jarred Knight, Ruben Roman, Mason Rossignol, Lydia Short, and Joshua Zappone. Trainers include Chris Zappone and Daniel Deschaine, while the commander is Craig Fay. Diane Norton is the executive officer.
“I guess it means that I did good,” said Burke modestly, “I didn’t think that I was going to get this because I work with a lot of people and they’re all really good at it. Sometimes training can be challenging,” she added, “but Young Marines is really fun.”
“We look for character, determination, focus, and self-assurance in our honor graduate,” said Commander Craig Faye, “once a recruit becomes an honor graduate, they’re at the point where they’re listening to themselves, they’re helping others, they’re doing what they need to do, they want to succeed, and they have that inner strength that a lot of today’s youth lacks.”
“Our Gung Ho award, Gung Ho being Chinese for ‘work together’, is the close second to the honor graduate,” said Faye.
“I owe my award to all of the recruits that were with me during my boot camp time,” said Conley, “everybody in here encouraged me to do this, especially my parents. I really do love being a Young Marine,” he added, “I just wish we met all week instead of once a week.”
This is the seventh year that the County Patriot Young Marines have been offering their program for area youths, both male and female.
“The Young Marines is a national program,” said trainer Daniel Deschaine, “so for the graduates, they’ll now belong to the national program, which is something that they’re obviously proud of,” he added, “they’re no longer Young Marine recruits, and they’re unified with everybody else in Aroostook County who’s completed the training.”
“I think we trained for about 15 weeks to become young marines,” said graduate Zack Lavway, “I wanted to become a Young Marine because I had a couple of friends who participated in the organization and they said it was pretty fun.”
“I wanted to participate with Young Marines for two reason,” said Conley. “The first reason is that half of my family was in the military, and the second reason is that I wanted to do something productive with my life instead of doing drugs or other negative things.”
“I’ve been doing a lot better in school, homework wise, and I’ve been doing a lot better with housework and stuff like that,” said Lavway. “The commanders are really great, and they really help you out. I have to admit, boot camp was pretty hard, but it’s fun afterwards and we do fun stuff sometimes,” he added.
“I think training is always difficult at first, because the new recruits don’t know the expectations of the trainer and it takes a while to learn about each leader and what they expect from you,” said trainer Chris Zappone, “but they’ve gotten in better physical shape, they’ve hopefully learned some discipline and to follow orders from their teachers and their parents, that was one of our goals, and we hope to instill in them respect for their elders.
“It’s not just about coming here and going through drills,” said trainer Daniel Deschaine, “we try to be active with some games that we play, but aside from that, they have scheduled classes such as drug awareness, how to say no to booze, there’s programs that we provide for them so that they don’t take that wrong path in life.”
“We asked the kids last week what it is that they feel they’ve accomplished from being here, and the majority of them basically stated that they weren’t as confrontational any more and that they listened at school better,” Deschaine added. “Now, whether they’re just saying that because they think it’s something that we want to hear, I hope not, but we do follow up with the schools,” he explained, “if they’re having problems at school, we try to address it here as well.”
“They are special people, they really are, and we teach them to do their best in whatever they do, whether it’s playing an instrument, taking a test, or anything else,” Faye said.
Anyone interested in obtaining more information on the Young Marines program can access the national web page at http://www.youngmarines.com or the County Patriot Young Marines at http://cpyoungmarines.net
