Army sergeant surprises his kid, tells them he's retiring

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) - Andy Jenkins felt sad at school all day Monday.

He'd said his goodbyes once again that morning to his father, Andrew, believing his dad was going back to his job as a basic training officer at Fort Benning in Georgia.

"All I could give him was a hug," said the 11-year-old Andy, a sixth-grader at Blackhawk Middle School.

That feeling changed around 1 p.m. when his father walked into his classroom to make the announcement that, after 14 years in the military, he was retiring and staying put.

Jenkins, his wife, Aimmie, and Andy then went to Haley Elementary School to make the same announcement in daughter McKenna's fourth-grade class and daughter Chloie's first-grade class.

McKenna didn't want to go to school Monday, her father said, hoping instead to linger with him a while longer. Jenkins and Aimmie had kept the surprise reunion a secret all weekend and it wasn't easy, Aimmie said.

After all the surprise visits, the family, shy in front of all the media cameras, clung to one another as an ensemble while Dad was forthright about his tough decision.

"There have been so many military moves," said Jenkins, who moved his family to Fort Wayne in July. "I'm from here. It's a good place to return to. All we've known for the last 14 years is military."

Jenkins who finished his career as a staff sergeant will now look for a job, hoping his veteran record will serve him well. He signed up for the service after graduating from Snider High School in 2002.

The 32-year-old Jenkins remembered himself as an 18-year-old recruit, straight out of high school. He had received a scholarship to Lincoln Tech where he was going to study auto mechanics. Then he visited a recruiting office.

He followed in the footsteps of many his family members, he said. His father served in Vietnam and his grandfather in Korea.

"All the men in my family have been in the military," he said.

He has done four tours. The first three were in Iraq, starting in 2003 in Baghdad, then during the surge in 2005-06 and then in 2010. His last tour was in 2012 in Afghanistan.

His job as a "cav scout," or scout for the cavalry, was dangerous, setting up a platoon-sized base, watching the enemy for days when "all sorts of bad things would happen," he said.

Not surprisingly, he doesn't want to talk about them, especially in front of his children.

Each time he returned to his family, each person had changed and adjustments had to be made.

"They're not going to come back the same person. You have to fall in love again with the same person," Aimmie said of the transition home. "They lose a piece of themselves over there."

All Jenkins would say is that the Army shows a PowerPoint presentation to soldiers re-entering family life. "There's room for improvement," he said.

Jenkins thanked God he was in the position to retire, alluding to others who didn't make it back. His wife, he said, "is the backbone of our family," adding that his family had been "a great support system."

After the hoopla, the Jenkins family had plans to spend the day and night as a whole family.

"We'll spend time together and have a great time," Andy said.

"No more goodbyes," Andrew Jenkins said. "No more. . Yeah."

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Source: The (Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette, http://bit.ly/1XgLJeM

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Information from: The Journal Gazette, http://www.journalgazette.net