USAG Benelux Spotlight: Jarrett Wolfe

[Editor's Note: In this series, we are shining a light on our workforce in and around the Benelux. This Spotlight is on Jarrett Wolfe, APS-2 Zutendaal Site Manager, who shares his pride in Native American heritage as an example of strength through diversity in Benelux community.]

ZUTENDAAL, Belgium - Army Strong is more than a motto for speeches and briefings, it represents how the Army gains strength from the diverse backgrounds, skills and talents of its Soldiers.

In some cases, diversity among Soldiers is readily apparent and for others, the diversity behind the individual is more hidden, but no less important to making the Army team as strong as it can be.

For Jarret Wolfe, a former Army Medical Service Corps officer who looks like his British and Danish forefathers, people are often surprised to learn he has Native American heritage from his great-grandmother who was full-blooded Cherokee. His Cherokee heritage is something he has known his entire life, with both a sense of pride and understated appreciation that America is inherently culturally and ethnically diverse by means of its history. On his mother's side, his great-grandfather's Family hailed from the Wessex region of Southern England and were among British settlers who colonized Virginia and encountered the Cherokee people there.

One of the ways Wolfe remained connected to his heritage growing up in Virginia was through large Family reunions, which often hosted up to 200 people and included the Cherokee side of family. Another was his boyhood interest in a two-meter-tall mahogany wood statue of a tribal Cherokee Indian chief that is now around 90 years old. Wolfe would see the statue every time he visited his grandparents' home.

"I was absolutely fascinated," said Wolfe. "My grandfather would tell me stories from when he was growing up … his father was a miner and as a boy he would take care of the farm with his mother [who was Cherokee]. She died when he was only 14 years old and after that he ran the farm together with his brother while his father worked 12-15 hours a day in the mine."

Olen Carpenter, Wolfe's grandfather who is now 81 years old, is traditional when it comes to his meals and often hunted his own food, passing his skills to Wolfe during more than 20 hunting trips on Cherokee lands in Virginia.

"My grandfather is an avid hunter and he taught me how to shoot with compound and recurve bows and a hunting rifle," said Wolfe.

Another memorable experience from his youth was the time his grandfather visited Wolfe's school to talk with students about the Cherokee people.

"It was my 4th grade year, and my grandfather came in and talked about his Native American heritage," said Wolfe. "He knows a lot of history about the Jamestown Reservation and colonialism in the Virginia region during the 1600s and 1700s."

While Wolfe has deep appreciation for his Cherokee heritage, he also explained that it doesn't really define who he is as a person.

"I'm American, no matter what. I believe that we all come from some sort of muddy water and where we are today is we're all just Americans."

Although Wolfe feels that his Cherokee heritage doesn't make a huge impact on his daily life, he does think it has given him a broader sense of appreciation for his work overseas as an active-duty soldier in Germany and Poland and his current leadership role at the garrison working with a diverse multinational workforce at APS-2 site Zutendaal.

"I started working at the international level and saw the purpose of the United States military working with different countries for the shared goal of freedom for all people, and preserving that freedom through common defense," said Wolfe.

Wolfe's heritage has also given him appreciation for the importance U.S. history and the value of diversity in the Army.

It reminds me of how the United States came together to create one great nation and how the Army works together as one force, even though we are made up of many different individuals, he said.

This Spotlight series will continue to tell the stories of our workforce in and around the Benelux. We are the Army's home - we are IMCOM.

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