Finding the American Pioneering Spirit

If you are looking for the American pioneering spirit, you can find it all around you as a military spouse.

During a recent luncheon with my community and spouses’ club, I had the pleasure of meeting two new Army spouses. These two ladies were a perfect blend of similar and differing Army experiences. Martha was at her second duty station, like myself, and Amanda had moved many times.

All three of us have children, and the discussion turned to the unique experiences our children have while one or both of their parents serve in the Armed Forces. Amanda is currently homeschooling her children because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recently, she was discussing a book with her 6 year old that covered amazing places across the globe, including the Eiffel Tower and the Roman Colosseum. Amanda was explaining to her child that most people will never visit these locations in their entire life, and that at 6 years old, this child has already been there. I shared this previous post with both spouses, which questions whether my children appreciate all they have.

As our discussion drifted to other topics, Amanda shared that she is from Wisconsin and how her husband joked that her family could do a two-hour recall for the entire extended family. Apparently, Amanda is the only member of the family that has escaped the two-hour radius within which they all live.

This got me thinking about something that has occupied my mind since my father’s death in 2013, the disappearing pioneering spirit of our country.

Prior to my father’s death, I would help out with chores, handyman projects, and various other tasks at my parents’ home. It was a lot to juggle, as my wife and I were both working, caring for three children under 5 years old, maintaining the home we were renting, maintaining a 120-year-old 2-unit rental property, and taking care of my parents’ home and personal needs. But if I wasn’t able to get to their house right away, it was okay because they had each other and had been doing a good job of it for nearly 50 years together.

That changed when my father passed.

My mother was suddenly a woman in her 70s who hadn’t been on her own since the early 1960s and had physical limitations in a northern winter climate where snowstorms that produce two feet of snow are not unusual. My relationship with my mother transitioned. Of her three children, I was the only child living in the same town as my mother and within walking distance.

Over the next several years, my wife and I juggled all the balls in our lives and looked in on my mother more often.

And then we looked to our future by looking to our past.

When my wife Julia was in between her first and second years of law school in the late 2000s, she had the opportunity to intern with the Army’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps at Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington (yes, it was still known as Fort Lewis back in those days). The experience was life changing for my wife who had not previously considered a career in the military. When the Army offered her a commission upon graduation from law school, my wife and I had an honest conversation where I expressed my hesitancy at becoming a military spouse. At the time, I had a career with a Fortune 500 company that would evaporate the moment we relocated to our first duty assignment.

Fast forward to the years following my father’s passing, and my wife and I were in a different places in life as many of us are in different stages of our lives.

The thought of revisiting the missed opportunity with the Army seemed outlandish to a certain extent—me, on the wrong side of 40, and my wife, on the wrong side of 30. But the issue of my mother was paramount. While she had been living independently for two years and had one child 90 minutes away and another one three hours away, we checked on her frequently. Those first few times we re-visited the issue of the Army, our conversations never went anywhere because we simply didn’t feel right moving away from my mother.

And this brings me back to the broader issue regarding the United States of America and what was once our pioneering spirit.

As we reach adulthood with children and nephews and nieces and our parents growing older and sometimes requiring assistance, we find ourselves intractable. Unable to escape our current circumstances, so many of us use every reason and excuse to justify our current geographic location.

For my wife, her desire to serve in the Armed Forces never waned. The camaraderie, the duty to country, the meaning it put into her belief in the law were always going to be an irresistible draw pulling her back to the Army.

It didn’t happen quickly, but eventually, I convinced myself and then my wife that we needed to make the decision that was right for us as a couple and our three children, and in doing so, we could still look out for my mother. Critical to my wife’s acceptance of this decision was my argument that we could rent a place large enough at our first duty assignment, Fort Bragg, that my mother would be welcomed.

Okay, I know this sounds strange, but I actually tie the original 13 colonies and their pioneering spirit to what’s left of the pioneering spirit in America today. I often tell people, if early settlers had lived with today’s mindset, we would still be the original 13 colonies. It would have gone something like this:

SCENE: Massachusetts farm in 1788.

MAN 1: Have you heard about this place they call Ohio? They say the ground is as fertile as the Garden of Eden, and they are granting parcels to anyone just willing to make the journey there!

MAN 2: I would, but all my family is here so I don’t think so.

Like Amanda’s family in Wisconsin, for much of my life I lacked the pioneering spirit that built both individuals as well as this country. Although I spent some time living in both Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., I kept returning to Vermont. And I wasn’t alone.

According to the Pew Research Center, only 11.9% of Americans changed residences between 2007 and 2008—the lowest percentage since the government started tracking the figure in the 1940s (and the last year for which I could find these figures).

The pioneering spirit is waning in America.

Except in the universe we inhabit as military spouses.

In the military spouse universe, the American pioneering spirit is alive and well. When we married into the military world or joined the military world together with our spouse, we followed in the footsteps of those early colonialists who trail-blazed to the West. Like our forefathers and foremothers, we focused on the opportunity, and yes, adventure, ahead. Our journey will take us to new towns, new states, new countries, new climates, new job opportunities, and much like life for those early settlers, will require us to adapt to constant changes over our entire military life.

And like those early settlers we didn’t stop caring for and loving those left behind in our hometowns all across America. We embody that American pioneering spirit.

As we left Vermont for that first duty assignment at Fort Bragg, I said to my mother as we stopped by her house to say goodbye, “You can pack a bag right now and get in the passenger seat. We have a spare bedroom waiting for you in North Carolina, and I will return you to Vermont at any point you wish.”

Although she didn’t take me up on that offer, she did join us that winter for several months and again following year for an even longer period.

While we do not face the many dangers and daily challenges the early settlers faced, it is safe to say that the American pioneering spirit lives within you, the military spouse.