After a 24-year military career with the Alabama National Guard, retired U.S. Army Sgt. Major Gary Price now leads the Enterprise High School Junior Reserve Officer’s Training Corps (JROTC) Wildcat Battalion.

Price grew up in Enterprise and graduated from EHS in 1984. While his stepfather was in the military Price said he started considering a career in the military after graduating.

“I was working at the Pizza Inn on Rucker Boulevard and decided one day I needed to find something to do,” Price recalled. “I wasn’t going to make a living doing that. So, in Feb. 1985 I joined the Alabama Army National Guard and left off for basic (training) at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri in July.”

After graduating from basic training, Price was placed into “active duty special work” for 90 days before being placed into active duty full-time with the Active Guard Reserve (AGR) in Enterprise. Price spent nine years with the 1146 Personnel Service Company based out of Enterprise.

“At the time, the Alabama National Guard had more than 20,000 service members,” Price said. “The AGR had two personnel companies – one in Enterprise and one in Montgomery – and our company maintained over half the records of the Alabama National Guardsmen.”

Price went on to become a recruiter for the National Guard for seven years, where he became one of the top recruiters in the state, in both Ozark and Enterprise. After being promoted to E-8, Price led his own team of recruiters for three years and then was promoted to Sgt. Major in which he was over a number of recruitment teams in the central part of the state before retiring in 2009.

“I enjoyed it,” Price said of his time in the military. “Sometimes I feel guilty because I grew up in Enterprise and made it from E-1 private to E-9 Sgt. Major and never got deployed.

“I do feel bad about that but I was fortunate I never had to deploy and I met a lot of great people all across the United States.”

During his time recruiting at EHS, Price got to know Sgt. Major Johnny Snodgrass – who was the JROTC instructor at EHS at the time – pretty well and Snodgrass approached Price about possibly applying for the position in 2009.

“He called me in January of 2009 and told me he was getting ready to hang it up and would like me to think about coming in and taking his spot,” Price remembered. “I hadn’t even really considered retiring until that point and it got me thinking then.

“I had been commuting back and forth all over the central part of the state and I just decided one I was ready to move on.”

Price has been the JROTC instructor at EHS since July of 2009.

“It’s been great,” Price said. “The first year, I will be honesty, it was a growing experience for me.

“Being a Sgt. Major I was used to telling people to do stuff and they didn’t question things and just did it.

“I started working with a bunch of 14-18 year olds and it took me about a year and a half to kind of settle in there. Now, I get up every morning looking forward to work and working with these young adults and trying to steer them in the right direction.”

Last year, the JROTC program received a grant from the state that helped pay for a full military-style obstacle course that Price said he hopes will eventually bring other JROTC programs to the EHS campus for competitions.

“It’s been great and once word gets out I’m sure we’ll get some more local schools to come in and have some competitions with our cadets against theirs,” Price said. “We love it; the cadets love it. A lot of the students come and ask if they can get on it and of course they can, it’s for the whole school, not just JROTC.”

While Price is no longer a recruiter, he’s proud that a number of his JROTC cadets move on to the military after graduation, and he says that the JROTC program especially tries to help students that are interested in joining the military.

“We don’t steer them that way,” Price explained. “We have a good portion of our seniors – between 10-15 out of around 40, that go directly into the military.

“We have all the branches that come in here, we don’t show any favoritism. We have all the service branches come in and talk to our cadets. We talk to them if we know someone has a bad home life and is talking about joining the guard or reserves, we’ll try to steer them into active duty and try to get them into active duty.”

Price said that a number of EHS graduates receive ROTC scholarships each year, as well.

“We’ve had several (cadets) that have gone through the service academies and a boat load of them leave here and go into a 4-year with a ROTC program,” Price said. “We have two at Auburn right now with full-ride ROTC scholarships.”

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