This guest blog was written by Mary Kemmer, a Penn State student and proud military-connected child.
Families serve, too. They face the demands of military life, serving their country as they are challenged by new duty stations, uncertainties, and commitments. They do the emotional labor of supporting servicemembers and making a nomadic life more sustainable. As a child of an Army officer, I saw the service of the military family in action, not just as they elevated morale and ensured mission readiness, but as they did the work of friends, neighbors, and community members. Military families and children serve their country, but they also serve one another.
In 2014, my family moved to Newport, Rhode Island while my father attended the Naval War College. A nine month program, most families spend about a year in the area, making friends with classmates and remaining embedded in the military community through a common purpose. We spent our year on an island called Jamestown, attending a civilian public elementary school but associating, primarily, with our friends and community of military-connected peers from the War College. After my father’s graduation, however, he received unaccompanied orders. These orders meant two things: that I would spend the next year of my life without my dad and that my mother, sister, and I would remain in Rhode Island while our friends—our support system, our community, and our chosen family—moved away.
Our military community PCS’d, and we were left to navigate civilian life on our own. I remember sitting in a parent-teacher conference with my mom during that fall, trying to answer to my fifth grade teacher about “why it sometimes appeared that I wasn’t focusing during class.” I blamed it on my dad’s absence and the conversation moved on. My teacher was a well-meaning woman with high expectations for her students and a solid grasp on the needs of Jamestown’s community but who was unprepared to support a military-connected child in her classroom.
That year was a challenge; my family needed support but had few opportunities to receive it. In my experience, the military family can find themselves stuck in a limbo when stationed stateside—they’re still away from home and subject to the uncertainty and challenges of military life but may have limited access to the community and neighbors who can help. This meant that my mother single-parented without the community of people who understood what it meant to be military-connected. My sister and I navigated a school that wasn’t built to include us and tried to make friends with kids who told us they “already had enough.”
There was one other family, though. A retired Navy family, they were permanent to Jamestown, so they hadn’t moved away when the rest of our friends were reassigned. During one of the hardest years of my childhood they did what the military community does best—they stepped up. Under their wing, I spent countless hours after school watching movies, learning, playing, being a kid, and receiving the support I needed. Their home became my safe place because it was filled with people who knew what it was like to miss a parent on orders and how hard it was to find a place in the Jamestown community. In many ways, their kindness compels me to work for and with military-connected children now. I know what it means to feel seen and supported by one of our own and, as a military child, that is a special power and experience I now hold.
After our time in Rhode Island, my family spent seven years stationed 4,000 miles away from familiar restaurants, pastimes, people, and schools. Luckily, we were deeply embedded in the military community. Like that Navy family on Jamestown, the military community filled in and stepped up: neighbors celebrated holidays together, classmates’ parents stitched together a support network, and formal supports like Army Community Service and Military Family Life Counselors eagerly served the families that serve, too.
My experience changed again when I was pulled back into civilian life as I began my freshman year at Penn State. As I had in Rhode Island, I felt the profound absence of my military community; I left a lifestyle, camaraderie, and sense of purpose when I moved to Pennsylvania. When you live the first eighteen years of your life behind post gates, you don’t realize how they’ve shaped your sense of self, safety, and daily life until they’re gone. The quirks of military life disappear and so do the people, leaving you with the experiences and memories of a military childhood without the people who can empathize. As such, I began to look for the people and programs who understood my experiences as a military child amongst my new Penn State community.
The military-connected students I met became my support network, empathizing with the challenges of navigating GI-Bill benefits, traveling internationally to get home, having a parent retire from the Army, and returning to a country I’d been so far from for so much of my life. I found my military community in a civilian world. My support network grew once more when I received the opportunity to work with the Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness. For me, the Clearinghouse acts as a bridge between my past and what I envision for the future of the military-connected community.
Approximately 80% of military-connected students attend K-12 U.S. public schools, warranting the training and preparation of the educators who support them. I picture children like myself and my sister, challenged by military life and in need of friends, teachers, and professionals who know how to help. I’m reminded of that parent-teacher conference that fell short, and I wish that my teacher had known what to say to meet my needs. I’m lucky, though, because now I get to collaborate with the people who are working to ensure military-connected students don’t share my experience. Resources from the Clearinghouse ensure all teachers—not just those who have a military-connected background in common with their students—can support military-connected children. I believe these steps will ensure families like mine are supported and prepared to meet the challenges that lie ahead of them.
It’s true that military families serve their country and each other. It’s true that the community is strong, unfailingly generous, and cultivated through shared lived-experience and purpose. I also think, however, it’s true that through increased visibility and research, our community is growing to include those beyond post gates.