COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: General
Money for college? Nah. It's service to country.
Will Higgins, IndyStar
November 29, 2007
FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- Kevin Crist is a quick study. In only his second
year on the job, he is the top National Guard recruiter in not just
Indiana, but the nation.
"Well, there are a lot of people out there who want to serve," he says.
Crist is not quite older-brotherly: He's too modest, and his style is
too rigid -- he wears battle fatigues and has the soldier's
high-and-tight haircut.
He's not quite parental: At 29, he's not much older than his target
audience, many of them high school kids.
What Crist resembles most is a camp counselor, a particularly cool
and competent one, a guy kids relate to but who's also an authority
figure, someone whose judgment they respect and whose approval they seek.
In the entry hall of Wayne High School, Josh Saylor, 18, rolls up his
left sleeve to reveal a new tattoo.
He's cautious with the unveiling, looking up at Crist with some
trepidation. Crist gives a slightly disapproving eye roll, though he
can't say much because not too many years ago he got his own tattoo.
Saylor decides it's OK to plow ahead with the story of the tattoo. "I
went with Justin Graves," he says, "and . . ."
"Did Justin get one?" Crist interrupts.
"No."
You feel relieved for Justin.
It is this level of intimacy that all military recruiters seek, and
that Crist achieves. This year he recruited 70.5 soldiers to the
Indiana Guard (a soldier who signs up for an additional term counts
as a half). The number was 5.5 recruits better than the nation's second-best.
"Sergeant Crist gets down on your level and will talk about
problems," says 18-year-old Benjamin Blake.
Blake graduated from Wayne in the spring and, after several sit-downs
with Crist, signed up for the Guard. He's headed for Iraq in March
with the 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, as are nearly all of
Crist's recruits. "There's a lot of us (who) look up to him."
Crist has not gone to war himself. He'd expected to deploy with the
76th but was ordered to stay put and recruit. "Did I want to go?
Definitely," he says.
On the move
Crist does not come off like a supersalesman. He can give a knowing
wink, but mostly his face is earnest, expressionless. He doesn't talk
fast. He does keep busy.
"He's the best because he's active," says Lt. Col. Ivan Denton, who's
in charge of recruiting for the Indiana Guard. "You can't make it as
a recruiter being inactive. You must mingle. You're almost a
minister. You're trying to spread the word."
Crist works constantly, often 70 or 80 hours a week. He is a regular
at high school football games, sometimes bringing along the Guard's
portable climbing wall, which invariably draws a crowd.
He takes phone calls at home late into the night. He meets with
potential recruits and their parents on Saturdays and Sundays. "I'm
on seven-day orders," he says.
He figures that for every 10 people he recruits, one actually signs
on the dotted line.
There is little financial reward. Crist, who has a wife and four
children, brought in nearly four times as many recruits as the
average recruiter, but his bonus for the year was $9,000. That's on
top of a salary of about $24,000.
He had a "good job," he says, working in a warehouse as an assistant
shipping superintendent, but after the 9/11 attacks, he felt a surge
of patriotism and in a matter of months joined the Guard.
"I do this so I can tell my kids I helped make a difference," Crist says.
He signed up at a time when Guard numbers were dwindling nationally.
In 2003, Guard troops were part of the Iraq invasion force, and
recruiting classes that year were particularly slim: Just 1,925
enlisted in Indiana.
Denton increased the number of recruiters to 176 from 80, and
nationally, Guard units offered $20,000 signing bonuses.
Change in emphasis
Recruiters had long been leading off their pitches by promoting the
Guard's benefits, such as reimbursement for college tuition. But
after the Iraq invasion, it became obvious the Guard would be called
on for more than just sandbagging swollen rivers, and at Denton's
insistence they put the emphasis on service to country.
"We've got some great benefits if young people want to go to
college," Crist says, "but before I talk to them about that, or
bonuses, I talk to them about soldiering, about putting on the
uniform and serving the country. I find that outlook really helps me
in getting people to join."
Recruiting is booming. In Indiana, 2,811 recruits signed up in fiscal
2007, a 46 percent jump in three years.
Crist had some sales experience when he joined the Guard in 2003 --
he'd worked at a men's clothing store in his hometown of Bluffton --
but he learned military recruiting at the feet of the master: Ricky
Weber, the Guard's national recruiting leader in 2005 and 2006.
The decidedly animated Weber, who was part of the Iraq invasion ("It
was awesome") and calls the war there "the show," now manages the
Indiana Guard's recruiting office on Fort Wayne's southside.
"Recruiting is a total teaming effort here," Weber says. "The
difference here is, if (a recruiter) isn't clicking with a kid,
they'll pass him off to another recruiter who does click."
Fertile ground
Fort Wayne is fertile ground for recruiters of all military branches.
For one thing, the high schools here are open to them, wide open.
Wayne's sports teams are the Generals, for the Revolutionary War
general "Mad" Anthony Wayne, whose 20-foot-tall likeness -- on
horseback, sword drawn -- decorates the school's entrance. Crist sets
up at a folding table outside Wayne High's cafeteria twice a month.
Recruiters aren't this welcome everywhere. In Bloomington, they're
held to one visit per semester, and they're not allowed to ask
students' names and addresses.
"We live in a community where the belief is aggressive military
recruiting is inappropriate, " says Bloomington North High School
Principal Jeff Henderson.
"What?" says Saylor, the newly tattooed Wayne senior. Saylor tried to
join the Guard earlier this year but weighed too much. He since has
lost 20 pounds and has 20 to go. "Why wouldn't you want people
protecting your freedom to come in and help your kids protect your
freedom?" he says.
"I think it's good for me," says Justin Graves, Saylor's friend who
resisted tattooing. Graves, a senior at Wayne, joined the Guard last
summer. He's one of Crist's recruits. He attended basic training at
Fort Knox. It was pretty much like Crist said it would be.
"He said the people you meet there are like your brothers," Graves
says, "and they are like your brothers. And he told us about the
dignity and stuff, and honor and self-courage, and you get that, and
everything."
Crist, who has another 18 months before his term expires, plans to
re-enlist -- again and again. "I plan on 20 years at a minimum," he
says. "I will be a career soldier."
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