He follows with a brief sales pitch: "I joined to travel, to see the world . . . I didn't just want the house in the suburbs. I wanted to do something with my life." Plus, the Marines will pay for college, he says. You don't want to be living with your parents the rest of your life, do you?
The kid seems mildly interested, but keeps glancing over at the cafeteria, where all his friends have gone to eat lunch. Baxley could lose him any second, so he moves fast.
Staff Sgt. Jason Baxley with recruit Travis Mitchell at the Marine Corps office in Columbia.
(Photograph by Chris Hartlove)
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"What are you doing tomorrow?" Baxley says.
"I'll be here."
Baxley asks him if can stop by his office, but the student doesn't have a car. Baxley asks Lee Souder, a River Hill student whom Baxley recruited earlier in the year, if he can give the student a ride after school. But as they're discussing it, the student mumbles that he has to go and slips away into the cafeteria.
And so it goes. For the next couple of hours, Baxley gets a few nibbles, but nothing that he thinks will happen this month. River Hill, one of the best high schools in Howard County's vaunted school system, can be a tough sell. More than 90 percent of its graduates go to college. But at least he's here, being seen, showing these kids that there is another option out there. Maybe he planted an idea in someone's head. Maybe one of the juniors he spoke with will come to him next year.
It's not as if River Hill closes its doors to the military. The principal, Scott Pfeifer, is receptive to recruiters as long as they don't abuse the privilege. "Not everyone in college or in this school is affluent," says Pfeifer. "And not everyone is ready for college right away."
Right away. Which, of course, implies that eventually they'll go to college. Perhaps Pfeifer means that not everyone is ready for college, period. But the college-bound sensibilities are so ingrained here that they seep in even as he is trying to be open-minded about the military.
The Marines would desperately like to change that. Which is why every year they take a group of area school officials such as Pfeifer to the place where Marines are made: Parris Island.
THE TRIP TO PARRIS ISLAND is a public relations offensive, and the Marines are not coy about their intentions. If the Marines can convince this group of 75 teachers, guidance counselors and principals from the Baltimore-Washington region that the Corps is a viable option for their students, they are that much closer to convincing the students of the same.
Even if the educators don't become die-hard Corps supporters, the recruiters make valuable contacts in the schools. As Lt. Jeff Banasz, the executive officer overseeing many of the recruiting stations in the region, explains, "I can walk into their schools and say, 'Hey, I need this transcript, can you help me out? And, say, remember when we were drinking a beer together in the officers club?' "
Last year, the Marines spent nearly $1 million transporting almost 2,000 educators from around the country to South Carolina or California for a three-day, all-expenses-paid taste of the rigors of boot camp.
At the beginning of this trip to Parris Island, a colonel tells the teachers that their help is vital because less than 10 percent of recruits walk into a Marine recruiter's office and say they want to enlist. "The rest must be located, sold and motivated by a recruiter," he says. "We say we're an all-volunteer force, but really we're an all-recruited force."
Peter Vogel, a 40-year-old social studies teacher at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, listens with a fair amount of skepticism. A self-described "firebrand liberal," he says he "wouldn't send one of my own kids to war, let alone someone else's." His wife "hates that I'm here," he says. "She abhors guns."
Most of Vogel's students, like those at River Hill, go to college, but every once in a while he comes across one who could benefit from the military, he says. His principal excused him from school so he could take this trip. A substitute is teaching his class.
But not all school administrators think their staff should spend teaching time being wooed by the Marines. George Kispert, the principal of Northeast High School in Anne Arundel County, told one of his social studies teachers that if he wanted to make the trip, he would have to use personal leave.
"I did not see the direct connection between the trip and what the teacher was doing within the realm of the classroom," Kispert says. He wouldn't have a problem sending a guidance counselor who's dealing with career planning, he says. "I just had trouble, though, with a teacher who has a full course load." The teacher, Kaz Mahmud, decided to use personal leave to see what the Marines have to offer students.
The Marines do their best to win over the educators, giving them tours of F-18 fighter jets, allowing them to shoot M-16 rifles, introducing them to fresh-faced recruits with "Yes, ma'am-No, sir" manners.
On their final day at Parris Island, the visitors watch newly minted Marines march onto the parade ground in perfect lockstep during a boot camp graduation ceremony. When the drill instructor shouts halt, hundreds of boots hit the pavement in one coordinated stomp. "You have paid your dues and have been found worthy," a first sergeant tells them as their families wave flags in the stands. When "I'm Proud to Be an American" plays over the loudspeakers, at least three of the educators start to cry.
Vogel's eyes don't water, but he does buy a Marine Corps T-shirt from the base's post exchange. When he gets back to school the following week, he shows his students a slide show of the pictures he took. Thanks to the trip, he has a much better understanding of how the Marines work, he tells them, and thinks that the Corps is one of the most awe-inspiring institutions he's ever seen.
Nevertheless, Vogel says, he'd be hesitant to recommend the Corps to his students, especially now, when there's a war going on. He knows someone has to end up on the front lines. He just hopes it won't be any of his students.
ON APRIL 23, BAXLEY'S LUCK CHANGES. Lee Souder, the River Hill student, walks in with his 20-year-old next-door neighbor and announces: "He wants to join."
"Yeah, right," Baxley says. Other recruits have tried this stunt before -- tease the recruiter, get his hopes up, especially late in the month when he still is short of his quota, and then tell him it's all a joke. But this time, it's not a ruse.
"I'm serious," the 20-year-old says. "I want to join."
He's sick of working for his parents' landscaping business. He aces the entrance exam, passes his physical a couple of days later and, just like that, he's in. Baxley has his second for April.
Then Sarah Mero, the track star, makes good on her promise, over the objections of her coach, and suddenly Baxley has signed his three with four days to spare.
With Stepney having a stellar month, the office makes its quota, and Gowl is ecstatic. But by April 29, the last full day of recruiting for the month -- any prospects to be counted in April would have to be at the processing station by 5:30 a.m. the next day -- several of the other stations under the region's command have fallen short. When Baxley and Gowl checked in with the region's headquarters, "it sounded like death," Baxley says. "There's going to be some ass-chewing."
Gowl orders his crew to stay late and work the phones like a telethon. If they can enlist a few more, it would help out the bottom line.
"We're getting someone on deck tonight," he says. "We're not going home till we get one."
A teenager strolls by on the sidewalk outside the station, and Baxley's eyes light up. He turns to a recruit who is hanging out in the station and pulls him to his feet. "Go get him. Go," Baxley says, pushing him toward the door. "Go. Go!"
Baxley and Gowl watch from the window, but the recruit strikes out. If they are really desperate to find someone, the recruit tells them as he walks back into the station, he has a friend at Howard Community College who might be interested. Baxley tells him to get the kid on the phone. Now. And within a few minutes Baxley is midway through his sales pitch: "When I was 19, I was in Italy snowboarding in the Alps every weekend."
"You know what they say about HCC, don't you?" he continues. "HCC is the 13th grade. My dad has people with college degrees working for him. You know what they're doing? Digging ditches. I know people who got out of the Marine Corps making $90,000 a year."
Just before he hangs up he says, "I just hate to see you waste your time." Then he turns to Gowl, who has been hovering nearby. "He won't come in tonight. But we can write him next month."
That's one less Baxley will need to get in May.
Christian Davenport is a reporter for the Post's Metro section. He will be fielding questions and comments about this article at 1 p.m. Monday on washingtonpost.com/liveonline.
