All in the Family

Jacquelin Longmire grew up in a military family where a love for service is as ingrained as deeply as the dyed wool of a dress uniform. Inspired by her brother’s Marine Corps enlistment, she joined the Marines, too, and enjoyed a two-decade career in service — and along the way, met her husband, Kenneth, also a career Marine, while on deployment.

“I’m real short — 5-foot-1, 100 pounds — and in boot camp, my other platoon mates helped me get over that wall,” she said. “I thought my drill instructor was going to be mad at me. Instead she said, ‘That’s what I’m talking about! That’s teamwork!’ I tell my daughters: teamwork. We have to do this together. When they go through struggles in college, we have to get together as a family, as a team, because they can’t do it by themselves.”

Now, Jacquelin and Kenneth’s three college-age daughters, having been raised in a household dedicated to the values of hard work and perseverance, are now charting their own course of selfless service, albeit with a different kind of boost over the proverbial wall — this time, from a cherished legacy scholarship.

Helping to ease the financial burden of sending three kids to college at the same time, the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation has granted $22,500 to sisters Alicia, Desiree, and Christina Longmire, or what amounts to $2,500 each per year.

Desiree Longmire, a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the financial aid “lifted a big weight off my shoulders,” and reminds her how her parents’ sacrifices for their family and for the nation will never leave her.