Her dad left on father’s day.  After he caught his flight, her sister left for college. Then her mom left for work. Everyone left.

It was hard being home alone because there was nothing to distract her from her father’s absence. It was worse than second grade because she had a better understanding of what was happening. The added stress of high school didn’t do much to alleviate the burden. It was all she could think about. Her dad was gone. He was off in an obscure place that she had only seen on a map. She didn’t know when he’d return.  She didn’t know if he’d return.

Senior Katie Andrews is the daughter of Colonel Phil Andrews, who has been in the military for the past 30 years.  In 1998, Colonel traveled to Bosnia as part of the NATO peacekeeping force. Andrews was less than a year old when her dad was first deployed.

“Katie was nine months old when I left. She did not know who I was when I returned and was scared of me at first. Here was this stranger in her house and she didn’t know what to make of it,” Colonel Andrews said. “It took several months for her to warm up to me.”

However, Andrews doesn’t remember her dad’s absence in her earlier years. It wasn’t until second grade when he was deployed for a second time that she really started to understand her father’s occupation.  It was hard for the 8 year old to wrap her mind around.

No longer was his job the place where she played in the sandboxes. The sandboxes  filled with plastic GI Joe figurine toys. Those very “toys” Andrews would later come to realize, were actually army figurines used to strategize while the sandboxes were models of the arid terrain of the Middle East. No longer was it simply her dad’s job in Belton, Missouri. It became the obscure thing that took him away for seven months and carted him off to the faraway land of Iraq. It was the obscure entity that removed him from her life, with the exception of phone calls, she hardly had contact with their dad.

Seven months later he came home and everything was business as usual. They fell back into a routine, Colonel left monthly to go to Chicago for army reserves training and during the week worked at the Center for Army Lessons Learned in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Life for third grade Andrews, was normal from then on. Her dad had a civilian job so there was no need for the spontaneous moves that usually accompany military lives. Everything was going fine at least until sophomore year when her dad decided to return to active duty to access the benefits of the GI Bill.

“It was hard because people knew that my dad was deployed but didn’t really want to talk about it,” Andrews said. “It was kind of taboo, they would treat you differently, they assume you don’t want to talk about it but sometimes you do.”

Sophomore year was hard for the entire family because of Colonel Andrew’s long absence, senior Megan Mckenzie, Andrew’s cousin, said.

Andrews’ grandfather served in World War II and her uncle in the Korean war, the lessons they learned were passed down to her father who passed them down to Andrews and her sister.

“He’s really taught my sister and I to respect everybody above [us],” Andrews said. “Teachers, sisters, coaches, our parents, he really taught us the value of if you have a job to do, get it done first and get it done right.”

As for Andrew’s potential service herself? It is all up in the air. She is looking into the Reserved Officer Training Corps  programs at a number of universities but has not made a decision. Regardless, her father has instilled an unwavering sense of pride and honor for her country that will never dim no matter where she chooses to attend school next fall.

“It has been my privilege to serve our great country. I will never forget the people I have served with in good times and bad,” Colonel said. “Those who have honorably served, either in war or peace, are part of an exclusive club and are the type of people I like to hang out with. Young or old we all have something in common.”

Every veterans day, the Andrews family celebrates in their typical fashion, which features either a trip to the WWI museum or a baseball game. Usually their family takes a few hours out of their day to reflect in reverence on all that the military signifies both for their family and the country as a whole. It is a quiet reminder of the lives that were traded for our freedom.

She is the girl who rows. She is a national merit semifinalist. She is the girl who embodies the sciences. She is the aspiring psychologist. She is the girl who has lived the army life for 18 years.