Marine grasps chance to build a new career

VIRGINIA BEACH

On paper, it might seem like Gary Mishoe has lost ground.

The Virginia Beach native went from making more than $50,000 a year assembling drive shafts at the Ford plant to a job that requires twice as many hours for half as much pay.

But Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Mishoe and his wife, Kerri Grannum, are surprisingly happy with how things have turned out for them since Ford shuttered its Norfolk F-150 plant in 2008.

"I think we're living better now," Grannum said on a recent afternoon as she wrapped gifts for their kids, 6-year-old Kameron and 2-year-old Kennedy.

Mishoe, home on leave from Afghanistan, agrees.

"Being 22, making that kind of money, I think it holds people back from doing what they want to do," said Mishoe, now 27.

When he had lots of money in his pocket from a job he didn't enjoy, he spent his energy thinking about what to do after hours - going out and partying, mostly.

The couple barely saw each other; she worked days, he worked nights.

"I always took care of my kids," Mishoe said. "But my priorities were somewhere else."

After getting severance pay from Ford, Mishoe worked on cars at a dealership in Atlanta for a few months. It didn't fulfill him.

He'd done a little modeling in New York and considered signing up with an agency. But that didn't seem secure enough to support his family.

He decided he wanted to give the Marines another try. (He went to boot camp after graduating from high school in 2002, but it didn't work out.)

"I knew from the first time he went in, it was something he always wanted to do," said Grannum, who was five months pregnant with their second child when her husband went to boot camp a second time. "I knew it was coming, I just didn't know when."

In 2007, the couple - high school sweethearts - moved across the continent to Camp Pendleton, Calif.

About a year ago, after Mishoe learned he'd be deploying to Afghanistan, Grannum and the kids returned to Virginia Beach, where both grandmothers live. She works full time at a Bank of America call center and is taking online classes toward a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. She tries to keep Kameron busy enough with karate that he doesn't have time to miss his father.

Mishoe stays busy in Afghanistan, too.

His job with Regimental Combat Team 7 at Camp Leatherneck, a base in the Helmand province, involves driving and caring for Humvees, trucks and mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles. He'll be there through late 2010.

He misses his family but likes having a sense of purpose. He's happy not to work on an assembly line, not to be tied to a job in Norfolk.

"Working at Ford was a job. I really didn't like it, but I did it because I had a family to support," he said in a phone interview from Afghanistan before coming home on leave. "Here, I feel like I have a family. If you're down, the guys will pick you up. That's one of the things that I like the most in the Marine Corps."

He likes it so much, he's planning to make a career out of the Marines - and is considering applying to officer candidate school.

Former co-workers at Ford sometimes seem surprised when Grannum tells them what her husband is doing now.

"When they hear 'military,' they think it's like a death sentence," she said.

She knows otherwise. Grannum likes her husband's sense of purpose and focus so much that it's rubbed off on her.

After the holidays, after Mishoe returns to Afghanistan, Grannum plans to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.

She thinks she might like to be an Air Force reservist.

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com