Parris Island Photos

Top 10 List from My Trip to Parris Island

10. Standing on the yellow footprints and listening to a drill instructor shout orders at me as if I were a new recruit just off the bus. Seeing the phones the recruits use to make their last call home before the start of boot camp. I don't know how they do it. I would have cried like a baby talking to my mother.

9. Attending liberty call (a ceremony held the day before graduation. Recruits see their family members for the first time in three months—no dry eyes) and graduation.

8. Eating dinner at Dockside with very cool female Marines from Fourth Battalion. With these women serving and protecting our country, I KNOW we’re in good hands.

7. Meeting Sergeant Sarah Lytle in person. She drove up from Pensacola.

6. Hearing a recruit say that she read Band of Sisters this past summer and it inspired her to become a Marine.

5. Reconnecting Marine LtCol Jessup and Air Force LtCol Polly Montgomery, C-130 pilot featured in Band of Sisters. They went to high school together at Atlus Air Force Base in Oklahoma (?) and haven’t talked since then (20+ years ago). Neither one knew that the other had joined their respective branches of the armed services, never mind that they were both lieutenant colonels.

4. Four-wheeling with Major Goyette. Goyette was an AMAZING tour guide during my visit to Parris Island. From breakfast to dinner and everything in between, she made sure we got to see as much as possible and that we got to meet as many female Marines and recruits as possible.

3. Having Chuck Taliano and Jennifer Bailey, former drill instructors, sign copies of their famous posters—We Don’t Promise You a Rose Garden.

2. Seeing Gunnery Sergeant Noel reconnect with one of her former recruits turned drill instructor.

1. Listening to the SgtMaj give fashion tips to the CO of Fourth Recruit Training Battalion.

Let me back up here for a second—The CO is NOT known for her keen fashion sense. I was sitting in the front row, between the CO and sergeant major, during a graduation ceremony. Before the ceremony started, the CO whispers to me that she has pants similar to mine. I pride myself on being somewhat fashionable, so imagine my horror … Just the night before the female Marines had given me an earful about their unstylish CO, and then she tells me that we dress alike. :) OMG. I don’t think so. She insisted. How could I argue? She’s the CO.

Maybe the SgtMaj needs to take all of us out shopping. Talbots anyone?