Soldier from Dexter meets big goal in Texas

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If you believe the old chestnut, the better part of success involves just showing up. When it comes to suiting up and getting the job done – even in the face of obstacles – Army Reserve Staff Sgt. James Patterson deserves a gold star. Make that two gold stars.

Patterson recently graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing from the School of Nursing at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. That’s an accomplishment in itself, but one rendered all the more remarkable by a stark fact: In the long road to earning his degree, Patterson was interrupted not once but twice. To go to war.

In his second deployment, he was tantalizingly close to graduating – one semester shy – before he was taken away from loved ones and his beloved studies to the scorching desert of Iraq for an entire year.

Patterson’s story is one of perseverance under trying circumstances, of keeping the faith and grabbing the brass ring even when life presents stumbling block after stumbling block.

The 45-year-old reservist takes a matter-of-fact view of his trial of endurance.

“I just told myself I wasn’t going to stop until I reached my goal,” he says.

Patterson, a genial man who bears a certain bald-headed resemblance to Bruce Willis – he could be Willis’ brother, maybe – sits in the kitchen of his modest North Side home decorated with Spurs basketball memorabilia and American flags. Ciara, his 7-year-old daughter from his second marriage, plays in the living room. On a laptop, he calls forth a photographic slide show of his stint in Gulf War II – the huge spiders, the dust storms, the truck he rode around in that got riddled with bullet holes (he wasn’t inside when it was fired on, but still …).

Twice in talking about his war experiences, he chokes up. A year later, the memories are still fresh, still tender.

Patterson was born in Dexter, Maine, a town of 5,000 where about the only industry was a shoe factory. He tried that out of high school and also worked at his father’s bottle-recycling business. But he found his true calling when he became an emergency medical technician, riding with the Fire Department’s ambulance service, pulling people from car wrecks, doing water and ice rescues or handling combine accidents.

But he wanted to learn more, and that would take schooling – a luxury his family couldn’t afford. So, like so many others, Patterson in 1983 joined the military, as had his father before him as well as his two brothers. In his early 20s he signed up with the National Guard, which sent him for medic training first to Missouri, then to San Antonio, at Fort Sam Houston.

“I joined the military for school,” he says simply.

After that training he returned to Dexter, where for three years he helped build roads and other projects for the Army’s 262nd Engineer Battalion one weekend a month, while still working for the ambulance service. But the siren call of school kept sounding in his ear.

“I had a passion for what I was doing, but I wanted more training,” he recalls. “That was always my striving. I just wanted to help people as best I could no matter what situation I was in.” Watching episodes of the TV show “M*A*S*H” also inspired him, he says.

So it was back to San Antonio in 1986 to undergo a yearlong training at Fort Sam Houston to become a licensed vocational nurse, or LVN, one step removed from a registered nurse. After his program ended, he and his wife at the time, who had traveled with him from Maine, decided to stay in the Alamo City.

“It didn’t snow here,” he explains succinctly.

Patterson got a job working as an LVN at the downtown Baptist Medical Center, working in the emergency department. But the lure of higher education continued, so he began taking the prerequisite courses at St. Philip’s College to prepare for nursing school. He joined a local Guard unit, the 217th Evacuation Hospital. Things were thrumming along.

Then, in 1990, his unit was activated to serve in Desert Storm. He was forced to put his studies on hold and decamp to Saudi Arabia, where he served as platoon sergeant, overseeing 60 soldiers, all of whom were medics and LVNs. It was a scary time.

“We got SCUD-attacked every night,” he remembers. “As soon as the SCUDs left the pad sites, we would scramble and put on our whole [chemical] suits, because you never knew what the rockets were holding.” Only later would the military discover there were no chemicals in those bombs.

His deployment lasted only three months, but after his return his first marriage crumbled, cratered by all his studying and working and his time away from home in the service. Undeterred, Patterson resumed work on his prerequisites and continued working at the Baptist, where he met his current wife, Maria, at the time a phlebotomist who also would go on to become an LVN.

To increase his rank and knowledge, Patterson, by now in his mid-30s, switched to an Army Reserve unit, the Practical Nurse Detachment, which is part of the 95th Division, made up wholly of instructors. He was now in charge of teaching other LVNs. But Patterson knew the only way he could apply to become an officer – his goal is captain – was if he held a bachelor’s degree.

So in 2003, he applied for and was accepted into the nursing program at the health science center in the Flexible Process program. It’s designed for those who have been LVNs for at least a year and have done 62 hours of prerequisite coursework – a fast-track program but a very challenging one. It’s supposed to take only 18 months.

Patterson was one year into the program when, at the end of 2004, his unit was activated for Operation Iraqi Freedom. He decamped again, this time for a medical training base that was a 2 1/2-hour drive north of Baghdad near the Iranian border. The only way in and out was by helicopter, since the roads were studded with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. On this stint, Patterson and his small unit were tasked with teaching the Army medic course to Iraqi soldiers, using interpreters, bilingual slides and scarce supplies.

This stint was even scarier than the last.

“Our base wasn’t closed, so a sniper could come in at any time,” he says. “We were on alert all the time.”

He talks of friends being injured, shot. The tears flow and he has to stop for a minute.

He came home on a vacation in May 2005 and attended the graduation ceremony of the class he was supposed to matriculate with – a disconcerting feeling, he says. But after returning home for good in December 2005, Patterson knocked out his four remaining classes that spring, summer and the next fall.

“It felt like 100 pounds taken off my head,” he says of going through his own graduation ceremony. “A chapter has finally closed in my life.” No, he says, he never thought of giving up. And with that ceremony, Patterson joined a small but growing cadre: Today, male nurses make up 8 percent of America’s registered nurses.

Maria, who has a 20-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son from an earlier marriage, says she never doubted her husband would follow through on his dreams.

“It was very tough, having all our lives interrupted by Iraq, all the ups and downs,” she says. “But to see him finally get his degree was very special.” An insurance specialist, she now plans to go on and earn her nursing degree.

“I tell him, ‘Now you’re done with yours, it’s time for me to do mine,'” she says.

Dr. Linda Porter-Wenzlaff, director of the Flexible Process program, says she marveled at Patterson’s ability to take up where he left off when his studies were disrupted.

“All students in the flex program usually come with a varied and circuitous background,” she says. “I always tell them that tenacity is how you get through it – getting up every day and deciding you’re just going to do it. And James has certainly had to do that more than any student I’ve seen in a long time.”

Today, Patterson is an LVN at Brooke Army Medical Center, on the ICU step-down unit – for stabilized ICU patients – where he has worked since 2000. He will take his registered-nurse state boards soon and is applying for commissioned-officer status. If he gets accepted, it will mean officer training school – a next step that would keep him stateside, at least for a while.

But Patterson knows there’s always a chance he could be deployed again, especially with all the talk of a “troop surge” in Iraq. If he becomes an officer, that means he gives 10 more years of his life to the Reserves.

“I’m going if I have to go,” he says. “Because while I joined the military for school, I’m also a soldier. I may not like it, it may be inconvenient, but it’s my duty.”