Bill Marshall and Ken Norwood are seen at the Winlock Community Building on Wednesday morning where they will hold Lewis County Young Marines meetings.
The unit staff for the Lewis County Young Marines have all served in the Marine Corps.
After months of work to start a program for youth in Lewis County, these four hope to pass on some of the things they learned during their time in the service.
“Our firm belief is that this program is good for kids,” said Ken Norwood, who is the unit commander. “It helps make better citizens and our country is in the hands of those kids down the road. We want them to have a good, solid foundation of good citizenship before they take over the reins of the country.”
Young Marines is a national youth organization that aims to build character and teach youth to be productive members of society, according to the organization’s website. The program promotes a healthy, drug-free lifestyle. The first meeting is set to take place on Saturday in Winlock.
The four staff members are Unit Commander Ken Norwood, Executive Officer Bill Marshall, Pay Master Jan Marshall and Training Officer Bonnie Holden.
Norwood is the head of the program. He has been involved with the Young Marines for about 15 years and was previously part of a unit in Eugene, Oregon. He said he is still figuring out how the Lewis County unit will operate.
So far, the unit has three members, but will continue to accept more. Although the national program takes members who are 8 years old to seniors in high school, the Lewis County Young Marines will take members who are 10 years old to high school seniors.
“We are testing the waters,” Norwood said. “... We will adapt a program similar to what I ran in Eugene. When a kid shows interest, we will work on bringing them aboard at that point. Depending on how many kids we have that show interest, we may start a new recruit class. We may work with the one individual to bring them on board and up to speed. We will just have to see how it goes.”
The program is not a recruiting service for the military. Members don’t wear any of the combat uniforms worn by branches of the military and the unit staff do not teach tactics or anything that is combat oriented. However, the program does stress discipline and teaches kids things the four learned in the Marine Corps that helped them become better citizens.
“We are an education and service program, with a primary goal of drug-demand reduction,” Norwood said. “Education being part of it, we deal with the schools a lot. We require the kids to bring us their report cards, so we can review them and see if there are any issues going on. Then we will start working with them in that way.”
The Young Marines hopes to raise awareness about common drugs, in both homes and neighborhoods, that can be easily accessed by children and young adults. Drug-demand reduction is an effort that aims to reduce public desire for drugs.
That aspect of this program is something personal for both Norwood and the Marshalls. Norwood lost a son to drug use, and his brother died in a car crash that was the direct result of another driver who was under the influence.
The Marshalls have seven children — five boys and two girls. One of their sons began using when he was 13.
“I didn’t recognize the symptoms, and all of a sudden he is in an automobile wreck as a passenger,” Bill Marshall said. “They killed two other people. The young boy who was the driver of the vehicle wound up spending a couple years in prison for vehicular homicide. My son didn’t get anything, so he started having mental problems and his drug use increased.”
Bill Marshall said that he and his wife believed for 20 years that they would receive a call from the county sheriff saying “come down and identify a body.”
“That call never came and we had to be tough parents about it,” Bill Marshall said. “... He finally got it — 35 years old and he finally got it. And now I’m really proud of him. He has come full circle, but it’s one of the things that you have to do as a parent.”
The unit staff for Lewis County Young Marines hope to be a positive influence in local kids’ lives and work with them before substances become a temptation.
“We are not a rehab organization,” Norwood said. “We don’t take kids who are in trouble and try to mold them into good citizens. We take kids who are basically good kids, good citizens, and try to make them better citizens for the future.”
The Lewis County Young Marines is still accepting this Saturday. For more information, contact Ken Norwood by email at Lewiscoymuc@gmail.com or by phone at 541-954-6197.
“When you start with simple little things that you are responsible for, that will eventually carry over into the more important things in life,” Bill Marshall said. “So the little things become important.”
