Military life beckons grads

NEWPORT BEACH — While most recent high school graduates are thinking about the next three months, planning farewell parties and picking freshman-year roommates, Jonathan Hange and Kyle McGhie are getting started on the next 10 years of their lives.

Both are 18, both graduated Thursday from high schools in Newport Beach, and both are about to begin careers that could eventually put them in leadership positions in the U.S. military.

“I got interested in it really young,” said McGhie, who will be inducted Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy. “I just loved jets and planes.”

Hange reports July 2 to begin studies at the U.S. Military Academy, better known as West Point.

Each young man boasts an impressive list of accomplishments, and each is, in his own way, determined about his career goals.

“I guess the best way to put it is I want to be constantly doing something,” Hange said, explaining why he’s interested in commanding infantry. “I don’t want to sit behind a desk, but to get out there and serve.”

Hange, whose family lives in Newport Coast, just graduated from Corona del Mar High School and has played soccer since he was a kid — something he’ll continue at West Point. He’s a military history buff, one of the things that drew him toward a military academy.

Hange’s grandfather flew bombers in World War II, but that’s really the family’s only military tradition. McGhie, a Newport Harbor High School graduate, may well be the first in his family to serve, but he thinks the military is a good fit for him.

McGhie’s mother, Catherine, felt a mixture of pride and concern when Kyle’s appointment came. She reminded him the Naval Academy isn’t the only path to working with planes and aeronautical engineering, but Kyle was determined.

“He said, ‘Mom, it’s the only way I know that I’m going to get to do what I want to do, and that’s fly jets.’ ”

Also an Eagle Scout, McGhie earned varsity letters swimming and playing water polo in high school. With his practices sometimes running five hours a day, sports probably helped give him discipline.

He’ll need it. McGhie is readying himself for the physical and emotional exertions of “plebe year,” when he’ll do a lot of running and he could be quizzed any time on a book of rules and regulations he’s expected to memorize.

“You have to be able to respond, and if you don’t respond you get yelled at,” McGhie said. “The idea behind it is when you first get there they’re breaking you down and teaching you how to follow.”

It’s a necessary step to get where he wants to be, which is flying jets and, eventually, designing them. He’ll go through four years of education, then a year and a half of flight school, and then he’ll likely be on active duty for five years.

Both Hange and McGhie realize they could be deployed, possibly to a war zone, but they accept that possibility.

“It didn’t really affect my decision in any way,” McGhie said. “If I end up going to war, I end up going to war. I just hope that the people at the top of the chain of command are making good decisions.”

In four years, Hange will graduate as a second lieutenant in charge of a combat unit with about 40 to 50 troops. He could be deployed as soon as six months later.

He said the Iraq war may have finished up by the time he’s leading a unit, but the U.S. probably still will have troops there.

“You have to think about the political ramifications” of the military in today’s world, he said. “Being an officer in the Army is getting so much more complex.”

That’s why he plans to brush up his Portuguese and Spanish, and he’s thinking about whether to add Arabic or Mandarin to his skills.

Going to a military academy means giving up a certain amount of freedom, but to Hange and McGhie it also means security.

“Just going to the academy kind of sets the next 10 years of my life on a certain track,” McGhie said. “I think I already have a lot of my life planned out farther ahead than a lot of my peers.”

For both young men, the careers they’re about to begin are the culmination of many years of dreaming and planning.

Hange started considering West Point as a sophomore, and mulled over the reasons with his parents during the long drives to his club soccer team in San Diego.

“He said that he was very aware that a lot of his friends are going away to college to have a good time for the next four years,” said Hange’s mother, Sarah. “He said, ‘I would like to be able to help preserve the freedom that they have to be able to choose that.’ ”