By Brandon McGlone
sports@garrardcentralrecord.com

(Lancaster, KY - July 30, 2020) - After getting Garrard County Board of Education approval to begin a US Army Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC), Garrard County High School officially hired retired Army Sergeant First Class Brett E. Meadows on July 20 to develop, build and teach the curriculum and program -- a start-from-scratch endeavor new to the county and its students.

“I enjoy being around the kids,” Meadows said about the reasoning for taking on the laborious role of building a program from the ground up. “It’s great to mentor young men and women. And a lot of what you do here is just like other educators; you’re very influential on the outcome of kids’ lives. What you do, what you say, can send them in a direction they never even knew existed. Everybody wants to be a part of their community and this is something that is needed.

“The biggest reason I wanted to take this on was to give kids a better opportunity. There’s a lot of opportunity out there that our kids in Garrard County aren’t taking advantage of because they just don’t know about the benefits of it. If we can build a legacy here and get even one kid a year a national scholarship, and be able to mentor kids to make them better people and route them into opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise know -- that’s the benefit of being here.”

The United States Army is allocating over $200,000 at the start of this program to Garrard County Schools for supplies, equipment, uniforms, rifles, drones, field trips, laptops, a potential obstacle course and more. The school’s only real financial obligation is to match the Army’s half of Meadows’s salary.

The JROTC will be housed in the Garrard Educational Center (old middle school) where they will have access to a couple of classrooms for learning and storage, and full use of the gymnasium facilities.

The JROTC’s mission statement is simple: “To Motivate Young People to be Better Citizens.”

JROTC is one of the most successful and significantly impactful youth-oriented programs in America. To track success they have identified five “Quality Indicators” used to measure the effectiveness of the program in high schools: attendance, graduation, indiscipline, drop-out rate, and GPA. JROTC exceeds schools’ averages across the nation in each of these categories.

The program will be provided as an elective class for school credit to all grade levels (starting at a basic level and progressing into a more in-depth curriculum) and will also operate as a club and extra-curricular activity. At the beginning all cadets will enter at the same basic level, like a private in the military. But Meadows’ hope is that within two years, as cadets progress in rank, the program will be student-driven with upper-level cadets inspecting the kids’ uniforms and leading drills instead of Meadows himself.

As part of the JROTC Seventh Brigade (which extends from Tennessee to Michigan), Garrard will also have opportunities to compete in events such as color guard, drill and ceremony, and Raider competitions (athletic individual and team events).

Visually, Garrard Countians will likely have the pleasure of seeing the JROTC perform the presenting of colors for the national anthem at certain events. The greatest potential benefit to the community will not be as visible at first, however, as it will be in producing a high-character group of youths as well as higher-learning and training opportunities for young people that will hopefully bring those skills back to the area.

While there is absolutely ZERO commitment to joining the armed forces in order to participate in the program (and that needs to be stressed for parents and students who are thinking about taking advantage of what JROTC has to offer), it will teach students the core values of character that the military instills in its members. At the same time it will serve as an enormous resource of information for students as they begin to navigate their future after high school. Numerous scholarship opportunities and other means of paying for post-secondary education and training are available and will be examined throughout a students’ JROTC career. 

“What I want kids in Garrard County to understand is there are so many options for them to pursue -- collegiate degrees, trade schools, technical schools -- that the military will pay for,” Meadows said. “One of the biggest reasons I do this is because even if I had known way back when that there were these opportunities, it may have changed what I did in life.

“There is obviously never a commitment for the kids who take this class to be a part of the military. What it really focuses on are those core values of the military that people look at and say, ‘Those are the kind of intangibles I want my son or daughter to learn.’ It’s the leadership, the teamwork, a sense of honor, duty, integrity -- those core values coupled with the ability to be a part of a team.”

Meadows, originally from Floyd County, enlisted in the US Army on his 17th birthday in 1990. After his initial service he found work in the justice system, first as a correctional officer and then as a police officer with Lexington. It was in Lexington he met his wife, Jessica.

After 9/11, Meadows came home from work one day and decided his service wasn’t complete.

“He said he wanted to sell everything we owned and re-enlist,” Jessica recalls. 

Meadows did just that and served until his retirement in 2019. At that time, with a BA in History from the University of Maryland and an MA in Higher Education Administration from the University of Louisville, his active-duty assignment was with the ROTC program at the University of Kentucky where he was a professor of military science.

His retirement papers were held up at Fort Knox by Maurice Bennett, Chief of the JROTC program, who wanted to see Meadows personally before the orders were finalized. With Meadows’s background in education Bennett thought he would make a perfect fit as a JROTC instructor, something you have to apply for within three years of retirement from the military. 

Meadows, a Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient (along with a plethora of other medals and commendations too long to list), already had a job lined up in Danville and was hesitant, but he eventually gave in. Last year he worked with the Estill County school system’s JROTC. Jessica went to work on bringing the program to their home of Garrard County, where the couple had been living for three years.

The Meadowses have three children: Bladen, 23, Seth, 20, and Kasey, 13, who will be an eighth-grader at GMS in the fall.

“I’ve always loved the JROTC program,” Jessica explained. “Everywhere we’ve went our kids have been involved in it and our son’s on a scholarship to UK in ROTC. I felt that I needed to advocate for this program. We have a daughter, and not trying to be bias, but I would want someone to give her these opportunities for college and to know these outlets. I thought it would be good to come in and push it as a parent and not Brett who was already teaching it, so I advocated and I came to the board meetings.

“I’m a parent and obviously want to help out my kids, but every duty station we’ve lived at I’ve always been involved with our community, tried to help out our youth, and push for the other kids as well. From day one this community has supported the program. I spoke to Connie (Lamb) first and she went out and got the numbers together, guided me on who to talk to, but the whole school board was on board. It wasn’t really a fight, it was just a matter of educating everyone and navigating the process.”

Jessica remarked that when she spoke to other parents in the community they were very curious, wanting to know more and how to get their child involved. The desire for the program was apparent in Garrard, but it needed a voice. That is where Jessica stepped in and found a strong ally in GC Board of Education member Connie Lamb, Ph.D..

“I think it brings opportunity for our kids,” Lamb said. “In our small community, sometimes in the past, we’ve neglected to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. When the Meadowses brought this to the board and asked us to consider it, I just saw it as an outstanding opportunity for the kids in the school district to have an option or a choice. The mission of the JROTC is about motivating young people to become better citizens, so I don’t know how we can go wrong with that. It has a lot of potential for kids to pursue leadership opportunities and has a lot to offer. 

“The financial component is really not a burden to our district at all. In fact it has minimal expense compared to what they have to offer and what they bring with them when they come. For our kids in the high school to have people there in positions of leadership, interested in developing our students and their leadership and citizenship, that’s just a stellar opportunity in my mind. Why would we not want that in our district for our kids? I couldn’t come up with an answer to that question so I pushed really hard to get it. So I hope we get to go back to school in a safe way, this program has the opportunity to get off the ground, and is really successful.”

High school principal Michael Anderson gave students a poll in January and 80 of them said they would be interested in joining JROTC, so he believes there will be enthusiasm for the program.

“We’re excited about it,” Anderson said. “It’s a great opportunity. The community has been asking for this for a long time and we’re excited the board has agreed to give us the position and allow us to go forward with it. Brett knows what we need to do to be successful. He is personable and the kids will be able to relate to him very well.”

It is a stressful undertaking to start from scratch -- order the materials and equipment, develop the curriculum, make the program enjoyable, educational and, eventually, successful. Meadows knows that the effort will be worth it though. It will not only open a multitude of doors for students, but make them better human beings for when they are ready to cross the threshold of that door. He is ready for the challenge.

“It’s a lot of pressure, but I will give it 100 percent.”

For more information you can email Meadows at beme226@uky.edu or call the high school at (859)792-2146.