Photo Gallery More than 450 service members earned their wings Friday morning at the Airborne Memorial at Eubanks Field. Among them was Staff Sgt. Jimmy Mercado, a 54-year-old Infantry Soldier whom school officials believe to be the second oldest person ever to graduate.
“He’s the type of Soldier who is always doing things,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Jose Mendoza. “Everything you tell him to do, every assignment he gets, he tries to do the best he can, and he does an outstanding job.”
Their Reserve unit rarely gets to send Soldiers to this type of training, so it was rewarding to see Mercado graduate, said Mendoza, command sergeant major of the 1st Battalion, 350th Logistics Support Battalion, Fort Allen, Puerto Rico.
The three-week training period that turns a Soldier, Airman, Sailor or Marine into an Airborne graduate is an intense process, he said, but Mercado was able to keep up with men and women a third of his age.
Mercado volunteered for Airborne School to encourage other NCOs to volunteer also, but when none did, he kept his hand up.
Mendoza was skeptical at first.
“He said, ‘Are you sure?’ I said yes, and he said, ‘Then we’re going to make it happen.’ That was just the beginning,” Mercado said.
At the advice of Mendoza, Mercado doubled up on his training for the physical fitness exam, which would be administered the first day of Airborne School.
“The actual physical training, I did double the amount because I didn’t know what to expect,” Mercado said. That included 125 pushups a day every other day for four weeks and running five miles three times a week and two miles twice a week.
“I just took it one day at a time,” Mercado said of the three-week course. “It is something that you have to dig deep down for. You can come here and be in good condition, but it’s a training that is totally different from other physical fitness training in the Army. Parachute training has to be different because it involves a lot of stamina. It involves looking inside yourself not only physically but mentally. It is something that you have to pull out of your gut and when you think you can’t go forward anymore you continue to go forward. There is no such thing here as ‘I can’t.’ That does not exist. It’s ‘I can’ and ‘I will.’”
Mercado said the only thing that could have stopped him from graduating was himself.
“My age to me wasn’t a factor,” he said. “The only factor that I kept thinking about was fear, and if I could conquer the fear I could conquer anything.”
According to regulations, Mercado said, he only has six more years, but he plans to spend as long as he can in the Army fulfilling his mission.
L. S. wrote on May 11, 2009 3:20 PM: