Lewis & Clark Young Marines is proud to announce, YM MGySgt Emma Langley has been named the 2018 Northwest Regiment Young Marine of the Year.
The Young Marine Northwest Regiment consists of 5 Battalions with 15 Units across 4 states. There are currently 376 Young Marines in the Northwest Regiment.
YM MGySgt Langley graduated from Lewis & Clark Young Marine Recruit Platoon 51510. When asked what she felt were her most notable accomplishments, she stated “I have recently been approved to receive my Distinguished Order of Merit (DOM), which is the highest award a Young Marine can earn. This is undoubtedly the accomplishment I have worked hardest to receive. However, my greatest success was being given the opportunity to give back to the program, by instructing at the 2017 National Leadership Academy. I found myself in a very unique position where I could both pass on my own knowledge and philosophies regarding leadership, and help those in my charge discover and develop their own leadership abilities.”
She was then asked what her proudest moment in the Young Marines was, to which she responded “My proudest moment in all my seven, going on eight years, of being in the program happened when I was at the Leadership Academy this past summer. Mr. Huff, Mr. Hendricks and a couple other members of the Young Marine cadre for the Academies were sitting in the office working on planning. Mr. Huff had been playing this Marine’s cadence most of the week, trying to hit the same notes she was, and emulate her tone and resonance. He suddenly turned to me and said, “Langley, do it.” Despite my protests, and lack of faith in my own abilities, he said he would fire me if I didn’t try. So right there, I closed my eyes and belted out the first “Left, Right” and in the middle of that office I sang a cadence I would have never had the courage to do on my own. That moment showed me a lot, but it primarily opened my eyes to the fact that while it is helpful to have people believe in you and encourage you to do something, it is another thing entirely to close your eyes and sound off like no one can hear you.”
When asked how the YMs has positively impacted her life, she said, “I am a firm believer in the ideology that family is not necessarily blood. In Young Marines I have found friends who, quite frankly, I consider my siblings, in every sense of the word. People who always have my back, who I can go to no matter what is going on in my life, who have been, and continue to be, the reason that I always have a smile on my face, and continue to do the work that I do both inside and outside of the program.”
YM Langley is a Senior at Hudson’s Bay HS in Vancouver and is in the Running Start program at Clark College. She has been admitted to, and plans to attend Western Washington University in the fall of 2018 in pursuit of a career in public service. How exactly that will manifest itself, she is not entirely certain.