Even in their 40s, some Mainers answer an inner call to duty
Article by Bill Nemitz, Portland Press Herald
Call it a sign of the times: A
decade ago, when the Maine
Army National Guard’s 133rd
off to war in Iraq, the average
age of its soldiers was 36.
personnel section. Toiling two
tents down from her in the
supply section is her 24-year-
old son, Spc. Andrew Parker
of Belfast.
“I grew up saluting, and when
my husband and I were
dating in high school, he used
to say that my dad had taken
my brain out and washed it
in a bucket of Army,” Parker
recalled with a laugh. “But if
you do the math, you’ll see
that I had Andrew a little
young. So I was kind of busy
raising him.”
“Now it’s 26,” said Lt. Col.
Dean Preston, the battalion’s
commander and a 24-year
veteran of the Maine Guard.
Yet with all the
20-somethings who now
bear Maine’s pine-tree patch
on the left shoulder of their
averages can be deceptive.
Sprinkled here and there in
this battalion of almost 200
“citizen soldiers” are those
who gave up more than their
share as citizens to take on
dangerous duties of a soldier.
They’re either past 40 or fast
approaching it. Their job titles
at home have achievement
written all over them, while
their military ranks here put
them among comrades young
enough to be their children.
Just ask Spc. Holly Parker,
41, of Brooks, a senior credit
analyst with Bank of America
in Belfast whose current
day job is human resources
specialist in the 133rd’s
Army recruiter. Her husband,
Sgt. 1st Class Randal Parker,
served with the 133rd in Iraq
and still works full time for
the Maine Guard.
DETERMINED TO MAKE
THE GRADE
Parker went to work for
MBNA in 2001 and, when that
credit card giant was bought
Spc. Holly Parker and her son, Spc.
out by Bank of America in
Andrew Parker, both members of the
2006, kept working her way
Maine 133rd Engineer Battalion, pose
up the ladder to her current
for a portrait together at Bagram
job, analyzing credit-card
Air Field in Afghanistan on Friday.
(Photo by Gabe Souza, Portland Press applications at the company’s
Herald.)
“I’m glad I could come with
him,” said Parker, who was 39
when she enlisted in 2011.
“I’d just rather he didn’t have
to come with me.”
Parker always wanted to be
a soldier. Her father, Robert
Hamilton of Brooks, was
a Vietnam veteran and an
40th birthday loomed, Parker
felt something was missing.
“I was 39 and I’m sitting in
my cubicle at work and I’m
thinking, ‘You know, I could
probably do even more than
this,’ ” she said.
So in March of 2011, just six
weeks before