A Calling of the Heart

We all have a calling. Some might refer to it as their vocation. A true calling to the military is a call to serve, an exercise in giving back. Or, as one Cistercian alum and veteran put it, “a calling of the heart.”

Following that calling can take one down many different paths. A few end up in the cockpit of one of the fastest and most lethal weapon systems in the skies today. Others find that answering their call led them to serving the dogs that keep their fellow soldiers and us safe by detecting bombs or explosives. Others might be surprised to find that suffering through those grueling Cistercian math classes actually paid off as a field artillery officer. These are a few of the stories of Cistercian alumni who have followed their calling of the heart.

A calling of the heart… BILL PRITCHETT ’97

When Bill Pritchett talks to young people who are thinking about joining the military, he asks them if they have had a “calling of the heart.”

“I tell them there are lots of reasons for wanting to join the military. There are many practical reasons. The service academies themselves are a great opportunity. There are patriotic reasons, of course. But I challenge them by asking if there is something in their hearts calling them to serve. It doesn’t have to be a crystal-clear calling— they are usually 17 or 18 years old after all—but I ask them if there is something that is calling to them,” Pritchett said.

At the United States Naval Academy, Pritchett followed in the footsteps of his two older brothers (Les Pritchett, Cistercian Class of 1989 and Naval Academy Class of 1993, and Jack Pritchett, Cistercian Class of 1993 and Naval Academy Class of 1997).

“My brothers and I were four years apart, and we all went to the Academy. So, it may be noteworthy that there was a Pritchett at the Naval Academy for 12 straight years. For me, part of my wanting to go there was: if my brother did it, I sure can,” he said and laughed.

A few years after leaving the Academy, he noticed an interesting but not surprising aspect of the student body. “I saw this statistic, and I’m sure it still is true that a high percentage of the students at the academies are Catholic. I think it’s a natural next step for a young Catholic person to want to ’do’ something. To act. The military isn’t the only outlet, of course. But it’s a good one.”

Looking back, he realizes that Cistercian played a role in his first step toward the military. “I appreciate the dedication and sacrifice of the monks. They are an amazing example for all of us, and we are lucky to have them in our lives,” he said. “There is a long line of alums who went to one of the service academies, and that’s just a proof-of-concept of the type of education we received at Cistercian; the values that were instilled in us by the priests, the faculty and the families that are a part of the School. More than anything, I’m just proud to have been a part of that Cistercian tradition of service.”

His modesty aside, Pritchett’s accomplishments are considerable. After graduating from the Academy just prior to the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Center in New York, he entered flight school and became the pilot of a P3 Orion, a long-range, anti-submarine and surveillance aircraft. As a 26-yearold, he found himself responsible for 12 other crew members and a $60 million aircraft “looking for bad guys” in Southeast Asia as part of Operation Enduring Freedom— Philippines.

After nine years, he left active duty but served another three years in the reserves while attending law school.

With law degree in hand, he went into private practice as a corporate attorney before becoming an in-house assistant general counsel for an environmental company. And last year, he became the general counsel for a start-up contract maintenance firm serving industrial plants such as oil refineries and chemical plants.

“Our employees,” he explained, “are hard-working, blue-collar workers providing for their families. They make our economy and the world economy go. In many ways, they’re just like the military: a bunch of hard-working, goodhearted people doing their part.”

From floating on air currents to riding a rocket

CHRIS UMPHRES ’04

For most of us, it’s hard to imagine what it would be like to rocket along behind the controls of the supersonic F-35 Lightning fighter jet, the most lethal aircraft in the world. But for Chris Umphres ’04, piloting the F-35 is not too far removed from floating along on the air currents in the glider he flew as a 15-year-old.

“The basics of aviation don’t change,” he explained. “Both the glider and the fighter jet get you from point A to point B. Where the fighter differs from the glider is in the weapon systems, the sensors and the mission sets that make it lethal.” In fact, his experience with gliders comes in handy as a fighter pilot.

“I had my glider license before I got my driver’s license,” he said. “Since most fighter jets are singleengine aircraft, we train on what to do if the engine fails. When that happens, the jet turns into a glider, and it’s up to me to manage the energy of the craft knowing that I won’t be able to add thrust from the engine. That’s what I learned flying gliders as a teenager. I’d like to think that flying gliders prepared me to be pretty good at that part of my training.”

During his senior year at Cistercian, Umphres was nominated to attend the Air Force Academy but was not accepted.

Instead, he accepted an ROTC scholarship at the University of Virginia, where he committed to the Air Force. Over his last two years as an undergraduate, he went through a competitive process and was selected for pilot training. Six months after graduation, he was stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, TX, where he trained in the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training (ENJJPT) program.

“At the other pilot training programs, you have to compete to go on to the next phase of training, but at ENJJPT, the default for everyone in the program is that you’re going to become a fighter pilot,” Umphres said. “So, if you want to be a fighter pilot, this is the program you want to get into, because there are fewer hurdles once you’re in.”

Umphres and his wife, Capt. Eleanor Washburne Umphres, who happens to be the sister

of Hunter Washburne ’01, are stationed at Luke Air Force Base outside of Phoenix, AZ. Eleanor is a lawyer and a member of the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps. She is the area defense counsel for Luke AFB. As Director of Operations for the 310th Fighter Squadron, a training unit, Chris splits his time between instructing F-35 pilots and directing the overall operations of the unit.

Over the years, he’s extended his commitment to the Air Force to pursue additional training and education, including a PhD from Harvard in public policy. He expects to serve through 2030 when he can retire with more than 20 years of service.

Looking back at his time at Cistercian, Umphres recalled Abbot Denis summoning him to his office. “He knew I was considering the military, and he called me into his office, the only time I was ever called into the Abbot’s office,” he said. “He understood the military from the Hungarian and Soviet perspective—authoritarian and totalitarian. He basically said to me: ’What are you thinking?’ But he didn’t understand the U.S. military the way I did based on my dad’s and my grandfather’s experiences. When I look back on that now, I remember it fondly, because Fr. Denis was only looking out for my best interests. I came away from that meeting knowing that he cared for me.”

From one band of brothers to the next...

DAVIS BENN ’15

“The culture of Cistercian is really a culture of service, a culture of giving back,” said Cpt. Davis Benn ’15 who recently started two years of training to become a member of the Army’s Special Forces, the Green Berets. “I look at what I’ve wanted to do in the Army—working on a small team of highly trained, specialized individuals—and I can see that this was set in motion for me back at Cistercian.”

“Many of my classmates were a lot smarter than me, but just being around that group of high-competence guys has carried me through the jobs I’ve had in the military. I mean, at Cistercian, you look to your right and look to your left and you’re around a bunch of high-quality men that push each other to excel. That’s where it started for me,” said Benn.

While in high school, Benn became interested in attending the Army’s West Point Academy because of the leadership training, and he’d always been an avid outdoorsman.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t accepted, but he didn’t give up his dreams. “I didn’t apply myself and put in the effort I should have in high school,” he said. “But it worked out. I was told you can’t just flip a switch once you get to college, but that’s what I did. I studied more and was more disciplined than I ever had been before."

He was awarded an ROTC scholarship to Virginia Tech where he finished his first two semesters with a 4.0 grade point average. He applied again to West Point and this time was admitted, but had to repeat his freshman year. The extra year in college worked to his benefit though. “I was able to figure out what I wanted to do, what drives me, and why I made the mistakes I did,” he said.

After graduating from West Point as an infantry officer, he set his sights on Special Forces. “I spend a lot of time outdoors. I gravitated to the infantry, and I knew that would be the best path to the Special Forces.”

After Basic Officer Training and Ranger School, he was assigned to the fabled 101st Airborne Division and its 506th Parachute Regiment. He served three years with the 101st and although he was never deployed to a combat zone, he was stationed for 10 months within miles of the Russian border. “When Ukraine was invaded, our unit was sent to Estonia to train with forces from our NATO partners, Germany, Latvia, Estonia, and others. I was able to see 11 countries while I was there.”

Last March, he went through the selection and assessment process for the Green Berets and was accepted into the program. The next two-plus years will be full of training courses on topics like tactics and leadership, survival, evasion, and resistance. After that, he’ll have a commitment of another three or four more years to Special Forces.

“I’ve always been somewhat restless,” Benn said. “I’ve needed to be constantly busy and pushing myself to meet the next challenge. The military has been another way for me to keep pushing the envelope. I don’t know how long I’ll do this, but as long as I enjoy it, I’ll keep doing it.”

Working alongside man’s best friend

LUKE TOMASO ’12

Long before he graduated from Cistercian, Luke Tomaso ’12 started thinking of pursuing a career in the scientific field and thought he might go into medicine. He finally settled on veterinary medicine, because, as he explained it, he “wanted to do something different. Being a physician would be a little too normal.”

Then during his senior year at Texas A&M, after he’d been accepted into veterinary school, he found out about the Army’s Health Professions Scholarship Program which got him thinking about the military. “I had never previously thought about combining the two, veterinary medicine and the military,” Tomaso said. “The more I thought about it, the more interesting it seemed, and it snowballed from there.”

After applying for and receiving the scholarship, he has since completed his original fouryear commitment to the military and decided to continue serving. In addition, the Army selected Luke to go back to school to complete a residency in veterinary radiology. He loves what he does.

“I really like being an advocate for military working dogs,” he said. “These animals are in a unique category. They are owned by the government, but it’s up to their handlers and us, their vets, to take care of them from the standpoint of their health and welfare. To do this, I have to build a relationship with the dogs and also their handlers. I find that very rewarding.”

Military dogs are typically trained in bomb or explosive detection, as well as going on patrol where their role is one of suspect apprehension. It’s demanding work.

“These working dogs are finely tuned athletes,” Tomaso explained. “There are a lot of physical demands placed on them. We see a lot of sportsrelated injuries like soft tissue and orthopedic injuries, as well as neuromuscular disease. “There’s a lot of pressure to proactively diagnose and treat their injuries so the dogs can do their job every day. When the dogs can’t do their jobs, that has implications for the soldiers who rely on them. We work with their handlers to optimize their care as best we can.”

Luke, who was on the football, soccer and track teams while maintaining his studies at Cistercian, sees this emphasis on both the mind and body as an effective preparation for the military. “While at Cistercian, we were always balancing the two, academics and sports. The School builds the person as a whole. I’ve seen a lot of individuals who struggled to maintain that balance and who had a difficult time with the military.”

Ultimately though, Tomaso takes his military service personally. “We all have frustrations from time to time with how our public systems work,” he said. “I joined the military because I wanted to make a personal investment in the functioning of our society. I wanted to have a personal stake in the things we rely on to have a functioning society.”

PETER GRAHAM ’02

Peter Graham’02 had a rude reawakening when he began his Army training as a field artillery officer.

“I thought I’d left my Cistercian math classes behind me, but at the artillery schoolhouse, they stuck a box of slide rulers in my hand and said: you’ll need these,” he recalled. “I quickly realized that I was well served by the critical thinking and problemsolving skills we’d been taught. Rote memorization and just repeating facts weren’t as important as thinking through second and third order effects. We were exposed to this in a lot of our classes at Cistercian.”

Peter was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to his interest in the miliary. He’d gone off to college at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, but it wasn’t until the end of his sophomore year that he met several fellow students who were in the ROTC program. “That kind of demystified the military for me,” he said. “I got into ROTC late in my sophomore year of college.”

During the summer before his senior year, he attended Army Airborne School at Fort Benning, GA, and a providential encounter with another Cistercian alum added to his comfort level with the military. “I found out that Nathan Porter ’95 was stationed there with the 3rd Ranger Battalion,” Graham said. “He picked me up one weekend, showed me around and was a huge help. He was really motivating for me. It was my first time on an army post, and Nathan was in one of the Army’s

elite units. I really appreciated the Cistercian connection. It helped me get through Airborne school.”

After graduating from Villanova and being commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, Peter did his artillery officer training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma before being stationed in Texas at Fort Hood. “I was hoping for Germany or Italy, but no such luck. I ended up right back in Texas,” he said.

His time in Texas didn’t last long. In May of 2008, he and his 40-man platoon were deployed to Iraq.

“The difference in culture was really stark,” Graham said. “We were working with school teachers and with people trying to provide clean water. At one point, one of the local town council members said that all our plans for a new canal were great, but if we weren’t going to let it rain, it wouldn’t matter. It just shocked me how different perceptions were.

They thought that as a 24-yearold, I somehow had control over the weather. Under Saddam, there was a perception of total government control, and folks in government often waited until someone told them what to do. It was foreign to us, since initiative and independent thinking were so important to us in the Army.”

After leaving active service in 2010, he entered the Army reserves and was deployed again in 2014 to Afghanistan, where he worked as an information operations officer, an office job—mostly. “I was with the Joint Task Force in a job that focused on developing ways to engage with the local population,” he said. “I was in the Kunar and Nuristan districts, which were very mountainous. It was amazing how different the culture was from one valley to the next in that area, and it forced us to find unique ways to engage with folks in each valley. It really tested our ability to organize massive amounts of information, write tailored content, and at times think outside the box.”

Another skill Graham honed at Cistercian and found useful in the Army was the ability to write clear and concise prose. “Being able to write well was surprisingly important. In the Army, they say: be brief; be brilliant; be gone. That means don’t belabor the point. Get to the bottom line and state your case clearly. Some of the guys had trouble with this, but I bought into it and felt giving clear and concise briefings became a strength.” •