Paul’s first official job as a teenager was working as a “Sandwich Artist” at Subway in Schuyler, NE. He also worked at a telemarketing company in Stanton for a short time. Then, as most Clarkson high school kids do, he ended up working at Bluebird Nursery, primarily doing maintenance work.
As high school was drawing towards a close, Paul was unsure of what to do next. He was accepted into Southeast Community College in Beatrice for horticulture (an interest he would maintain his whole life), and Northeast Community College in Norfolk for computer programming. However, his interest would soon turn towards the military. Paul considered the Navy for a while, no doubt because his Grandpa Svik had been in the Navy. Then, a Marine recruiter came to Clarkson High School and that got him thinking about the Marines. Also, Rich Little, the town cop at the time Paul was in high school, was a Marine and someone Paul considered a mentor (Paul probably also wisely thought it couldn’t hurt to have the town cop as a friend!). Paul drove to Omaha to the Marine recruiting office one day to get more information about the Marine Corp, and returned home having already signed on the dotted line. He hadn’t told Mom and Dad that he was going to officially join that day. We aren’t sure if he went there already knowing that he was going to join, or if he just decided then and there. He said that if he was going to join the military at all, he wanted to be part of the best (no offense meant to any other branches of the military!).
Paul left for the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego in September 1999. Even though Paul was not a regular at church during other times of his adult life, he regularly attended services while in boot camp. Recruits had a choice to attend religious services, or engage in extra PT (physical training), so it was common for Marine recruits to find religion at that time of their lives. Paul also served as a prayer leader for the Catholic members of his platoon. He graduated from boot camp in December 1999, and Mom, Dad, and I would attend this graduation ceremony. There are several photos on this website from his graduation.
Paul’s primary Military Occupational Specialty was that of a combat engineer, meaning that he was trained in demolitions, construction, mine clearing, maintenance and repair. Paul initially served with the Second Combat Engineer Battalion at Camp Lejeune, NC. When not in uniform, he would sometimes wear a Marine t-shirt that said “I’m a bomb technician. If you see me running, try to keep up.” While serving in active duty, he also received training as a maintenance management specialist, and as a non-lethal weapons instructor.
As anyone with knowledge of the military understands, his leave time to visit home was infrequent. For that reason, we feel very fortunate that Paul was able to be home for my wedding in March of 2001. However, he almost didn’t make it. There was an error in his original leave papers, such that he wasn’t set to start his leave until Saturday, March 31, the day of my wedding. However, he was able to get the error corrected, and his flight home into Omaha from Raleigh arrived at midnight, the night before the wedding. Paul served as an usher in our wedding, wearing his dress blues for the ceremony.
Later in the spring of 2001, Paul was sent to the Mediterranean area, where he was part of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a deployment responsible for patrolling ships for drug smuggling, and sweeping for mines in Kosovo. He was still there when 9/11 happened. As he tells it, all military personnel in the area immediately loaded on US military ships – it didn’t necessarily have to be the ship to which they were assigned. For a while, there was the possibility that military personnel already in that area of the world would go straight to the Middle East, but the group that Paul was deployed with would end up returning to the States, and he would then be deployed to Okinawa, Japan to serve with the 9th Engineer Support Battalion. Paul would spend his last year of active duty there. He would often express frustration about that, because he knew guys from boot camp who were being sent to the Middle East and he was “stuck in Japan” unable to do “what I have been trained to do.”
Paul was honorably discharged from active duty in September, 2003 at the rank of Corporal. He served one year in the Inactive Ready Reserve and joined the Active Reserve Marines, Engr Maint. Co., 4th Maint. Bn, out of Omaha in January 2005, as a Sergeant. As a reserve, Paul was trained as an Engineer Equipment Mechanic. He served as a squad leader, and later as a Platoon Sergeant.
Paul would eventually get his chance to go to Iraq, as part of his reserve unit. He left Clarkson in May, 2007, spent a week in Omaha, then the summer in North Carolina while training to go. He spent August 2007-March 2008 in Iraq, stationed at Camp Al Taqaddum. He was the heavy equipment mechanic chief in charge of maintenance of three battalions worth of equipment coming in and out of the maintenance bays. The Marines he led were responsible for maintenance of heavy machinery and up-armoring military vehicles. He was recognized for his group’s efficiency while there, and was promoted to the rank of Staff Sergeant. Thankfully, the only times he needed to leave the base (that we know of) was by helicopter, rather than by ground. He would travel to other bases to share what he had learned about improving the efficiency of up-armoring military vehicles. Even though he had returned from Iraq in March, he would remain activated for the remainder of a calendar year, returning to purely a reserve role in late May, 2008. Paul was honorably discharged from his reserve unit in April, 2010.
After Paul was done with his first four years of active duty, and while he was a Marine reservist, he of course held jobs as a civilian. Initially, these jobs were in the realm of construction. He was part of a crew that assembled pivot irrigation systems and machine sheds for Vacin’s near Clarkson. Later on, he was part of a crew building pre-fabricated homes in the Clarkson area. Then, he returned to Bluebird Nursery to do maintenance and drive straight and semi-trucks delivering plants to other nurseries in Nebraska. During the last year of his life, Paul worked as a crop adjuster for the same company that our Dad works for, Rural Community Insurance Services. Dad served as his mentor when Paul took this job. At first, none of us thought that this was a great idea (Dad and Paul working for the same company, and Dad training him, no less). However, Paul actually deferred to Dad’s expertise in this area. Dad would jokingly tell staff at various insurance agencies, “This is the first time in his life that Paul has ever really listened to me.” Paul really thrived in this job, being particularly skilled at the customer service aspect with the farmers with whom he interacted.
Paul and Dad would spend countless hours together during the last year of Paul’s life as they drove around working on claims. It was during these road trips that Paul would bring up the idea that he and Dad should consider farming together. Paul did a lot of work on the farm during the last year of his life. He was responsible for cleaning out a lot of the buildings, and hauling away scrap iron. He made one of the machine sheds into a more functional workshop by insulating it, putting in a heater, and creating a workbench. He put a wood floor and new lighting in Mom and Dad’s kitchen. Paul was also looking to become a homeowner himself. He was looking at various houses as they came up for sale in Clarkson, particularly ones that might be suitable for Mom and Dad, should they be interested in switching homes when they were ready to move off the farm.