“While you were sleeping, we were drilling.” That quote appears on Aléna Jarvis’ Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps T-shirt, and its sentiment reverberates through every aspect of her life.
Jarvis, a senior at Battle Ground High School, is this year’s recipient of the General George C. Marshall Youth Leadership Award. The award, in honor of the former secretary of state and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is presented to a Clark County high school senior who demonstrates leadership, takes a stand for the rights of others, serves as a role model, shows initiative and motivates others to become involved.
She is the first student from Battle Ground High School to win the award.
Jarvis was surprised and grateful to learn she had won.
“I could hardly believe it,” she said. “I had previously read the résumés of former selectees, and they have all been outstanding young men and women. I never thought I might have the same opportunity.”
She is quick to sing the praises of those around her, including her parents, teachers, coaches, counselors and JROTC leaders. “No one can achieve such an honor without support, guidance, and involvement from the community,” Jarvis said.
Those around her are just as quick to heap the praise back onto Jarvis. “Aléna is among the single most determined high school students I have known,” Brian Mathieson, a school counselor at Battle Ground, said in a school newsletter about Jarvis’s achievement. “She is determined to be and do her best.”
“Cadet Lt. Col. Aléna Jarvis is our No. 1 cadet in the Battle Ground High School Air Force JROTC program,” Col. Brian Brown, retired AF JROTC senior instructor at Battle Ground High School, said in the same newsletter.
In addition to being involved with JROTC as a member of the drill team and a former corps commander, Jarvis also performs with the wind ensemble and band, and is a starter on the girls varsity basketball team for Battle Ground High School.
She acknowledges the demands of JROTC are sometimes difficult. Her days start at 6:30 a.m., and she doesn’t have much time to just take it easy. She also knows that if being in JROTC were easy, everyone would do it.
“JROTC challenges its cadets every day,” Jarvis said. “It is hard sometimes, but nothing worthwhile should be easy. My four years of JROTC have given me the tools, knowledge, discipline and initiative to assist me immensely as I continue to move forward in serving my family, my community, my state and my country.”
The next step for Jarvis is a paid summer internship with the Vancouver Trust’s Celebrate Freedom office, which in addition to a $2,500 college scholarship comes as part of winning the Youth Leadership Award.
“I am excited about the internship, and hope for an opportunity to interact and learn from some very smart and interesting people,” Jarvis said. “Any organization with the word freedom in the title interests me very much.”
When it comes to college, Jarvis has the fortune of choosing among several excellent schools, including The Citadel (The Military College of South Carolina), Texas Christian University, and Marshall’s own alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute.
All three schools have highly rated U.S. Air Force ROTC programs and strong political science programs with supporting elements in international relations and U.S. security policy management — all must-haves for Jarvis, as she has aspirations to become an intelligence officer in the Air Force after graduation.
Her passion for American democracy was instilled at a young age. Her parents visited a Kazakhstan orphanage shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11 and adopted Aléna to give their daughter a chance to grow up in a democratic country.
Both of Jarvis’ parents had careers in the military. Her mother, Catherine, spent close to six years as a radio intercept analyst in the Air Force; her father, Roger, was an employee with the Department of the Air Force for more than 30 years.
“Our home is a virtual military museum made up of awards, plaques, framed pictures, hundreds of military books, and military memorabilia dating back before World War II,” said Jarvis.
When she does get a moment of free time, Jarvis enjoys doing a lot of the things your average teenager enjoys, such as watching movies, hanging out with friends and going on road trips. Yet even in her down time, she makes sure to support the military and its veterans as a member of the Ridgefield American Legion Post 44 Auxiliary.
“What I have learned from American Veterans cannot be taught in a class or a school,” Jarvis said.
All of these experiences have made Jarvis’ path toward serving her country a clear one.
“There could never be any other profession that I would even contemplate other than military service,” she said.
