Hopkins Marks Veterans Day with John Powell ’05

“I sat in these bleachers,” reminisced Veteran’s Day Speaker John Powell ’05, at an All School Assembly in the gym. “I sang in the Harmonnaires, I took Latin with Mr. Harpin, read Dickens with Ms. Fasano and dragged down the class average in math with Mr. McCord.”

With those words, Powell held the attention of students, faculty and staff as he recounted his decision to join the military and shared his perspective on the relationship between civilians and veterans.

“Veterans Day is a complicated holiday,” he said. It is a day to honor those who have served regardless of our individual position on the policies or actions that have called a veteran into service. Powell cited stereotypes of how veterans are often viewed—they are heroes, villains or victims. “Veterans make up ten percent of the population and the best way to know a vet is to hear their story,” he said.

And so he told his story.

In Powell’s junior year at Hopkins, the United States was committed to two wars—Iraq and Afghanistan. Powell recounted that he didn’t see anyone like him joining the military. It was a photograph on the front page of the New York Times in March of 2004 that startled him into action. The bodies of four Americans were hanging from a bridge in the town of Fallujah, Iraq. “I felt the full brunt of my privilege,” he recounted. “I had loving parents; I had safety, security and an education.” Others were putting their life on the line.

Powell wanted to do his share. He made up his mind to join the military. He wanted to enlist directly after graduation from Hopkins, a desire his parents did not support. “We fought about that,” he said. Powell did go to college—UNC-Chapel Hill—and he served as a Naval Officer in the Reserves while there. Upon graduation in 2009, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. After a year of training in Quantico, he became an Infantry Officer and reported to the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, in 29 Palms, California. He deployed twice to Helmand Province, Afghanistan. It was hard on his parents, he conceded. Powell is an only child. “They got a dog, and the dog and I still eye one another with suspicion.”

Powell spoke of the incredible comradery that develops among platoon members. “Nowhere else do disparate people come together for a common purpose with such intensity and service.” He described the task of patrolling a hostile area on foot as the hardest job. “It’s where the rubber of American foreign policy meets the road,” he shared, noting that it takes intelligence and incredible guts.

Powell has since left active duty as a Captain and he is currently in the final year of a combined Master’s degree program between the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. His wife, Brittany, is a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy. They live in San Diego, where Powell currently works as Chief Financial Officer for Service to School, a veteran’s education non-profit. Through Service to School, Powell is working with universities to increase student exposure to the life and times of veterans. “Bridging the gap between veterans and civilians,” he noted, “requires both sides.”

Watch John Powell’s full address in the video below.