Veteran's Day: My Anderson Story
November 10, 2022
Veteran's Day: My Anderson Story
Kyle Wade, Retired USMC
I am Kyle Wade, and this is my Anderson story.
In 2001, it was “Walk in our Shoes Day” at my middle school and my mom was in attendance. When the events happened, we were in a science lab doing a demonstration for our families when the televisions simultaneously flickered on, we had seen that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers (World Trade Center) in NYC. We watched the second plane hit. At that moment, I knew that this was no accident, someone was gunning for my home. This purged every bit of patriotism (that I never knew I had until this point) to the surface of my being. From that moment, as an eighth grader, I knew that I was going to serve my country in one form or another.
Fast forward to 2005, I visit my local recruiting station with full intentions of speaking with the Air Force recruiter. I didn’t know any better, but my entire life I had been fascinated by jets and all the different types of military aircraft, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Like so many others, I was almost immediately turned away when asked about my eyesight, I have a slight astigmatism.
I thought to myself, ‘Well, that didn’t go as planned’, so I stepped outside to puff away at another cigarette. Something about that habit that really makes you ponder life, anyway…While I’m out front of this recruitment center, a Marine shoves the door open, cigarette in hand, simultaneously lighting it as the doors swings shut right behind him. He was wearing Dress Blue Deltas, his Oakleys hid his eyes behind a deep, dark tint. The Oakleys adjust and seem to be aimed directly at my face at this point. “Aren’t you too young to be out here smoking these things?”, he muttered as he laid into another drag.
What I didn’t realize was that he was actively recruiting me at this point, although I felt like we were just shooting the breeze. I reveal my age to him, which at the time, I was LEGALLY too young to be smoking that cig, 17, but life’s rough at that age. Definitely not too young to sign up for the Corps, so long as my mom would be willing to sign that P.C. (Parental Consent). None of this mattered, I had already heard about the Marine Corps and that just sounded too rough for my liking. Now, at this stage in the game, I am a chunk in every sense of the word, I played defensive tackle and offensive guard, just all-around big boy status.
The conversation continues, or what I figured to be conversation, but at this point he is legitimately screening me through our little encounter. This guy, I could tell, was a cold, hard salesman, he had the stature that he’d been here before and I was on his home turf. As the cigarettes became butts, he looks at me and tilts his glasses down his nose and says in a sly voice, “you ever done a pull-up before?” To a big fella like myself, this is the exact question you never want to hear, it’s a lot of work pulling that kinda weight. Of course, I had done pullups in my day, but never “Marine Corps pullups”. For my Marines out there, you know exactly what I’m talking about. For the non-Marines: the Marine Corps enforces the policy of locking out your elbows for a pullup to count.
According to Marine Corps Order 6100.13A CH-2, “One repetition consists of raising the body with the arms until the chin is above the bar and then lowering the body until the arms are fully extended; repeat as many repetitions as possible. At no time during the execution of this event can a Marine rest the chin on the bar."
So, there I am on the bar, just knocking out (what I thought was) pullup after pullup and I’m feeling pretty great about myself as I approach twenty according to MY count. I hit twenty and drop, I shoot a proud glance over at the Marine, he has disappointment all over his face. He says, “I’m gonna give you one, and you’re lucky you’re getting that!” I recall thinking, ‘why is this guy harping on form so hard that he would only count one?’. That’s when I realized, the Marine Corps wasn’t just rough and tough for no reason. They demanded perfection in everything that they did so that when they went off to their duty for our country, there would be minimal mistakes.
From that point forward, I was in. I left for Parris Island, SC on September 11, 2006, I would already be deployed to Fallujah, Iraq by September, 2007. These combat deployments would continue as I was a part of one of the highest op-tempo battalions in the Marine Corps, Second Combat Engineer Battalion. By 2011, I had four combat tours under my belt. Immediately following my fourth deployment, they had cut me orders to become a recruiter, where I had a successful three-year tour, again with a very high operations tempo.
To make a long story short, once I returned to the Fleet Marine Force circa 2015, the op-tempo had slowed down, a lot. It was apparent that I had left a war torn, war ready Marine Corps and returned to a peace time regime. With a slow op-tempo, the effects of certain events during my deployments began to catch up with me. These effects, inevitably led to me spending the next two years at Wounded Warrior Battalion East (WWBN-E) to recover and heal my ailments. During my time at WWBN-E it was determined that the damage sustained to my shoulders was too much to continue my career, they retired me.
In January, 2017, I was medically retired in front of my home battalion by my former Commanding Officer. Upon the transition home, I enrolled in college and began hunting for jobs. I found myself working at a lumber yard and going to school. The commute became too much to balance so I wound up leaving the yard and working on campus. This made the commute easy; then COVID shut the campus down. Correction: COVID shut the whole world down.
During this time of quarantine, I realized that being at home all day, alone with my thoughts wasn’t a good fit for me. I found myself in a dark place, I had no idea what the world would be like post-COVID and I began pondering what exactly my purpose was. At this point, I knew that I had to think outside the box for employment because the stimulus checks and unemployment just weren’t going to cut it for me. One fateful day, I was scrolling through social media and I stumbled across the Anderson Manufacturing page. This place has been and will always be a fixture within the Boone County community, my home county. I knew it would be a shot in the dark, but I was already in the dark so I figured, ‘what’s the difference?’ I emailed them.
In the email, I explained where I had come from and where I plan on going in life, I also mentioned that sitting around in quarantine was not having a good impact on my mental health. By the next day, I had an email from the owner. The Andersons brought me in for an interview and hired me on the spot. I knew that from that point forward that I owed it to, not only myself, but to the Andersons for their kindness, to go as hard as I could everyday and make it worth their while.
With that attitude I quickly grasped the concept of team building rifles and components. I stayed in school the entire time, mostly remote due to the pandemic. I even had the opportunity to become a machine operator, which gave me some real perspective on how important quality is and what I should be looking for; this really helped when I went back to assembly for a second tour.
Two years had passed, I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in journalism and as mentioned before, they needed help in assembly so I transitioned from machining to assembly to help add some experience to the team. One day, the VP of Sales came down as he would every now and again to check on the guys and gals and see how everything was going. He pulled me aside and asked if I would be interested in helping out on the marketing side of the house. This was something that I wasn’t very familiar with but I knew that my skillset could bring a dynamic that would help; I told him that I would love to.
Ever since then, I have been learning and developing my skills to write up blog pieces for the site, I’ve had the opportunity to go to awesome gun shows and raise awareness about our brand, I’ve got the chance to shoot all the latest and greatest from Anderson and develop content for social media about them. All in all, I’m working in a position that my passion lies. I can gladly say that I drive to work excited to see what the day brings. That’s an incredible feeling coming from the dark place that I was at before, I am forever grateful to be a small piece of Anderson’s incredible team.
