Michael Parros

West Point, 2016

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Justin Joiner on July 30, 2016:

I wanted nothing more in my senior year at West Point than to be the Brew Dawg 1SG. I'll be honest, when I found out that Mike was going to be my commander, I was a little disappointed. All I knew about him was that he was a joker, but I was wrong. It took over two years of being in the same company for me to interact with Mike and realize that we was much more than just a joker. Mike was smart and confident. He could interact with anyone and everyone. He used this to his advantage as a leader because he always managed to get people to do what he needed to get done. Im just glad that I was able to do a few things with Mike during our last year together as classmates. We suffered through the Gettysburg Staff Ride together while MilArt instructors made us run across fields and listen to long lectures in the blazing sun. We made it through the multiple times we were called to LTC Mattox's office and even the couple of times we ended up in BG Thomson's office because our company had done something wrong again. And we laughed. We laughed a lot about the plebes in our company, and the number of times Mike could fail AMI in a single day, and our TACs, and the way we were ordered to "integrate the underclass." That's what I miss the most about him. Just seeing him laugh and smile while he sat across from me in the Mess Hall. I believe that the Army truly did lose a good leader in Mike. I know that he wanted to be a Ranger more than anything in the world. Any time I saw him after he branched infantry, he was always focused on bettering himself to become a Ranger. I didn't know Mike as well as I wish I had. That is a regret that is bound to happen with classmates and companymates that come from West Point. If I could see him one more time, I would tell him thanks for motivating me and teaching me something about people that are different from me. I do love Mike as a friend, a peer, and a Soldier and my prayers go out to all of his family and friends.

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