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Alumni Experiences Alumni Spotlight Student Experiences ROTC
For Veterans Day this year, BYU's Army and Air Force ROTC programs remembered those who paid the ultimate sacrifice through military service and honored finance professor Jim Brau.
After completing his undergraduate degree in environmental science from BYU, Trenton Blair jetted from soil labs to B-52 cockpits and joined the US Air Force.
As a teenage boy, C. Todd Linton fell in love with airplanes. This moment was the beginning of a lifelong pursuit in the field of aviation.
The BYU Army and Air Force ROTC programs recently held three commissioning ceremonies honoring 31 cadets.
BYU Army ROTC cadets placed in the top five at the Sandhurst Military Skills Competition in West Point, New York.
The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, were life changing for 13-year-old Nathan Christiansen. That day would inspire Christiansen to serve his country.
When former BYU ROTC cadet Scott Lovejoy was a newly enlisted medic in the United States Army, he received a surprise visit from his father that changed his life.
On November 11, 2021, the BYU Air Force and Army ROTC commemorated Veterans Day through a wreath-laying ceremony and presidential review.
When Stephen H. Russell reflects on his life, he is struck by the way seemingly small decisions and ordinary situations have blossomed into extraordinary opportunities. “None of this was part of a strategic plan,” he says, “and I feel grateful when I see all the times Heavenly Father has blessed me.”
A group of BYU Army ROTC students finished tenth out of more than forty teams in the April 2021 Sandhurst Challenge at West Point, New York.
Born and raised in Honolulu, Thomas Y.K. Fong has long loved learning about the earth’s natural processes. He originally planned to earn a bachelor’s degree in geology at BYU and then pursue graduate studies in oceanography. But during one midwinter geology field trip to St. George, Utah, a sandstorm blew through the group’s campsite, prompting Fong to reconsider whether his studies had brought him too close to nature for comfort. “Halfway through that cold, sand-blown night, I’m thinking, ‘Is this really what I want to do for the rest of my life?’” Fong recalls.
Whether he's flying helicopters across Afghanistan and Iraq or running 100-mile ultramarathons, Jeff Timmons applies lessons that he learned at BYU Marriott.

Just before heading to the University of Iowa to join the university’s swim team, John Fellows discovered a copy of the Book of Mormon on a bookshelf in his parents’ home in Boise, Idaho. He packed it in his bags, and before long he called the missionaries wanting to know more. The combination of his baptism into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a swimming-prohibitive injury led him to transfer to BYU, where he joined the Army ROTC and discovered what would become his lifelong career.
In remembrance of the tragic events of September 11th, members from the BYU Army and Air Force ROTC joined together to reflect and honor the fallen.

BYU Marriott Army and Air Force ROTC cadets recently commissioned as second lieutenants in the military.

A fascination with aviation and the bond he had created with his grandfather at a young age would eventually lead BYU Marriott finance alum Trevor Findlay to his future career as an army pilot.

When life threw U.S. Army Brig. Gen. William D. "Hank" Taylor a curveball while he was a pitcher on BYU's baseball team, he found a new course with BYU's Army ROTC program.

Cadets and faculty in BYU's Air Force ROTC and Army ROTC programs commemorated Veterans Day last month with activities that focused on both honoring the 212 fallen soldiers on the Memorial Wall in BYU's Wilkinson Student Center.
Quick transitions between life events have always been part of Merle Allen’s unofficial strategy for most of his life. At BYU’s 1954 graduation dance, the marketing grad, senior class president, and former varsity football player proposed to his sweetheart, Carol Beckstrand. After the MC announced the happy news, Allen says they then rushed to Beckstrand’s parents’ home to “tell her folks so we’d get to them before somebody else did.”
Eleven cadets on the joint BYU and Utah Valley University Service First Battalion Ranger Challenge Team won the 5th ROTC Brigade Ranger Challenge at Camp Gruber Oklahoma, 3 November 2019.

The past, present, and future don't often collide, but they certainly did during the BYU Air Force ROTC's senior capstone event: a six-day staff ride to Washington, DC, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and other historic sites.

This past summer, cadets from BYU and UVU in Air Force ROTC Detachment 855 gave the city of Orem a little taste of what flying an F-16 military jet is like.
Air Force Detachment 855's annual military parade was held this spring as one hundred sixty cadets drilled across the Richards Building fields.
Juniors from the BYU Marriott ROTC program who are now attending Advanced Camp, a thirty-one-day training event held at Fort Knox, Kentucky, were given a practice during field training conducted in St. George, Utah.