Lynn English students following their leader

LYNN – Carla Cora pivots on one foot, squares her shoulders, and locks her eyes onto Marine Sgt. Major Kenneth Oswald who asks her, “Do you know the name of the last Marine awarded the Medal of Honor?”Cora, one of 11 students dressed in camouflage and standing in a line in an English High School hallway, hesitates and then says, “The cadet does not know, Sgt. Major.”Cora is one of 204 students participating in the school?s Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps program run by Oswald since 1995. For 19 years, he has combined discipline and a sense of belonging to encourage 3,375 student cadets to stay in school and set goals.English JROTC graduates have joined the military, some have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Oswald counts seven Lynn police officers among former cadets, including Michael Crosby, the first student to express interest in joining the cadet program.Oswald can still remember the day Crosby introduced himself.?He said, ?I want to join the military.? I said, ?That?s not what we do here.?”Oswald tries to take teenagers on a journey from self-doubt and aimlessness to success. The trip starts at 6:20 a.m. on weekdays when Oswald, 62, arrives at English to run cadets through drill routines that have won them competitions across the country.Each cadet includes a JROTC course in their class schedule. The focus is on current events, time management, first aid and leadership. Wednesday is inspection day.?What are the three spices of leadership soup?” Oswald asks cadet lance corporal Edgar Martinez.?Courage, accountability and responsibility,” snaps Martinez.?He got it two-thirds right,” Oswald said later, “The answer is authority, accountability and responsibility.”English Principal Thomas Strangie taught at English in 1995 when educators decided to bring JROTC into the school. “The school was in the beginning stages of turning itself around from a casual attitude,” Strangie said.Oswald said initial plans called for a Navy JROTC program to take root at English, but Oswald said former Associate Superintendent of Schools Louis Perullo, a Marine, said no. Fresh from finishing an active-duty career in the Marines, Oswald was familiar with JROTC programs in Virginia when his phone rang.?I was sitting in Macungie, Pennsylvania, and a gentleman by the name of Donald Twomey called me and said, ?You just retired. We?re starting a program. When can you come?? I said, ?Where?s Lynn, Massachusetts, and is tomorrow too early??”Oswald spent almost 25 years “barking” at young Marines, but working with English students demanded a new way of doing things that ultimately changed his personality. He drilled cadets on uniform rules, inspection protocol and precision marching, but he also fielded calls from students? parents.Nancy Lufkin said JROTC transformed her son, Alex, in four years from an argumentative teen with little or no direction to an independent-minded student with a future focused on the Army, then college.?His grades went from barely passing to A?s and B?s. It?s our changed our life at home,” Lufkin said.JROTC has also changed Oswald. He has told students they can no longer be cadets because they got in trouble in school or outside of school, and he has seen students with little or no promise prosper in the program.?You can never take anything for granted. A kid with two left feet, who will never stop coming to practice, can excel but the accomplishments don?t tell the story – the journey does – where they started from and where they finished,” he said.Strangie said Oswald treats JROTC “with the utmost respect, and the kids give it back tenfold.”?He has saved lives, no doubt about it,” Strangie said.JROTC involvement has turned English into Cora?s “second home.” She typically arrives at school at 6 a.m. to drill and often leaves at 8 p.m. It takes prompting from Oswald for Cora to acknowledge her 2012 national individual drill championship in a competition that drew 1,200 participants.Cora will escort retir