Beau Beardslee “Defender of the American Dream”
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Written by Haley Freeman - Photography by Ian Wiant
eau Beardslee remembers exactly where he was on September 11, 2001. He stood on his high school football field during practice that day, looking into the sky with the certainty that he would be going to war. “I was really distraught over what had happened. Then I went into a recruiting station, and the first thing I said was, ‘What do I need to do to get into the fight?’” Beau joined the U.S. Army Infantry to be on the front line, and he was deployed to Iraq from 2006 to 2007. During the invasion of Ramadi, his unit worked in tandem with Navy Seals in a door-to-door sweep of the city, searching for insurgents. “We had to be so disciplined,”
he says. “Complacency would have killed us. We had to remain on high alert and pay attention to detail to do our job and stay alive.” After his honorable discharge in 2008, Beau returned home to beautiful Orange County full of gratitude for the privilege of living in this country. “I saw evil and the worse face of humanity my first day in combat, and I saw the turmoil the tribes were living in. Coming home to Orange County, I realized that I got to live in this amazing State. I had earned my right to say I’m an American and to have the American Dream.”
ExecutiveAgent Magazine