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Why we serve

Sally Spencer knows what it means to have a dog in the fight. The widowed schoolteacher and mother of five boys from Rockford, Ill., has seen each of her sons go off to serve his country. Soon, she’ll start seeing them off to war. OFFduty spoke with her and each of her sons — ages 22 to 30 — to find out what life was like in a house with five Eagle Scouts and what moved each of them to sign on the dotted line.

Phil: I can remember going to a Fourth of July parade growing up and seeing the local color guard march by. I felt it was the neatest thing in the world and I wanted to be a part of it.

Mike: I was interested in becoming an engineer to work on planes. But the Air Force had different plans for me. They made me a civil engineer.

Dan: My mom was really apprehensive about me enlisting. She asked, “Isn’t the National Guard usually the first ones to deploy?” I didn’t do it because my brothers did it. It was more for a love of country and to just do my part.

Tim: I wouldn’t have been as enticed to go into the military if my older brothers hadn’t. It was a collective thing. We always had the drive to serve our country.

Phil: Since Tim was small, he wanted to become a Marine.

Tim: I’ve always wanted to join. Picking a branch was probably the most difficult thing that I’ve done because my three older brothers are all Air Force. It was a tossup between the Navy and the Marine Corps.

Phil: We’re all Eagle Scouts, as well. Danny, the youngest, was the last, and we always say he would not have survived his 18th birthday if he had not made Eagle Scout.

Mike: It would have been like, “Four out of five? I mean, c’mon! What happened to the fifth one?!”

Sally: I think their grandfather had some influence on the boys. He was drafted in the Army in World War II. And their father spent six years on the [aircraft carrier] Kitty Hawk in Vietnam.

Phil: You can imagine she’s both worried and proud of all of her boys being in. But it’s not like we all got together when we were 10 and said, “OK, our master plan is to all join the military.” That’s not what we did.

Sally: Their father enjoyed Boy Scouts as much, if not more, than they did. At his funeral, both sides of the main aisle were lined in Boy Scout uniforms, saluting the captain.

Greg: I was the one who had to set the example. I had to keep everybody in line. I tell them, “No matter how big you get, I’ll always be able to beat you up. I’ll always outrank you in life.”

Dan: When it came to chores, they passed the buck down. Now it’s even worse, being the lowest ranking individual in the family.

Sally: They still enjoy each other’s company, which I really appreciate. I never realized that that was rather unique until some friends said, “Boy, you guys like spending time with each other!”

Phil: My mom didn’t allow us to play guns in the house, which is kind of ironic now. We weren’t doing low crawls in the backyard, but we also weren’t sitting in front of the boob tube for five hours at a time.

Greg: We all have good heads on our shoulders, and our parents brought us up rather well.

Tim: They encouraged us in whatever we decided to do, but they didn’t push us. They didn’t set our goals, they allowed us to set them. I can’t thank my parents enough for that.

Phil: The few times we’ve all been together in our uniforms, people came up to us and thanked us for our service. People thought it was the most amazing thing.

Dan: It was pretty cool watching the reaction on people’s faces when they see three officers and two enlisted guys in uniform walk by, who all look the same.

Greg: People thank us, but we really haven’t done anything. We haven’t gone to war yet, but we will.