PEABODY — High-school senior Evan Johnson enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve over the summer.
Johnson said he did not always know he wanted to enlist.
“My freshman year… I was super into cooking and I wanted to be a chef,” he said.
Johnson joined the Air Force Junior Reserve Officers Training Corp at Veterans Memorial High School during the second semester of his freshman year and is now the senior noncommissioned officer for the unit.
He said his friend suggested the two of them try JROTC and “didn’t really put much thought into it” at first.
“When I first joined, they were very welcoming,” Johnson said. “I didn’t really feel like I was out of place.”
He said that starting in his sophomore year, he began looking into military careers and planned on skipping college and heading straight into the Marine Corps.
However, he joined the Veterans Memorial wrestling team during his junior year and his plans changed again.
“I started to get into wrestling, where I was like, ‘I’m actually pretty good at this.’ And I fell in love with the sport and I want to do this more,” he said.
Now that he is enlisted, Johnson said he wants to wrestle in college and eventually switch to active duty after graduation.
JROTC has prepared him for his time with the Marine Corps by teaching him the “fundamentals of military” life, he said.
The instructors at the JROTC have helped shape him to be a “better person,” he said.
“They put a lot more care into us than any other normal teacher would,” Johnson said. “They try to help shape us so we can adapt to any situation.”
The main reason he chose to enlist in the Marine Corps rather than any other branch is because no one in his family has been a Marine, he said. His great-grandfather, grandfather, and uncle all served in the U.S. Air Force and other family members served in the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy.
“I wanted to be the first in my family to earn my ‘Eagle Globe and Anchor,’ which is the Marine Corps logo,” Johnson said.
