MAJOR PHILIP ROMANELLI

Serve as a Soldier when needed and then to go back into civilian life once the need is over: I think that really is part of the tradition of the Army Reserve.

I had the opportunity to attend graduate school overseas in the UK at the University of Cambridge and earn my MBA there. I got my orders for Operation Iraqi Freedom when I was in a pub; we were celebrating that we had just finished the last exam of the first term, and I get this call on my mobile phone.

It's one of the majors in my unit. That's when he told me we are deploying. We were supporting the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

Since I've been down here in the Washington, D.C. area, there have been some smaller times that I've had to take time off for the Army Reserve. Fortunately they've been brief, but my firm has been very good about it.

I enjoy the way that the Army Reserve and civilian life compliment one another. One day you can be on a parachute jump. (Once you jump there's nothing like sort of the feeling of being the air and floating down and just you, just out there free in the open air, and it's a great feeling. It's fantastic!)

Later on at work you may be doing something completely different, but it may feed in to some larger purpose, or you may be able to use the skills that you developed as a leader; leadership in a particular way, and I mean by that taking on more responsibility.

That's something that I think that the U.S. Army and the Army Reserve emphasize to a degree that perhaps other institutions can only envy.