An American Hero 1

 Let’s listen to some snippets from a conversation that I had with a man every Idaho farmer would be proud to know and we’ll find out why in a minute.

 (Ward) ‘I learned my work ethic working on my grandparents farm in Shoshone, ID. The ranch must have been 750 aces, not huge by Idaho standards but my grandfather had homesteaded it and my earliest memories were riding on a tractor with my grandfather while he bailed hay. I was driving a tractor before I drove a truck or a car, so that was my first automobile  was an old John Deere. You’ve got a lot of responsibilities, I think that ‘s probably where my responsibilities started was as a kid, working on a farm, they ran cattle and they had a small dairy and they also grew mainly grain and hay. I was very fortunate to have grown up being exposed to those types of things. Got very interested in politics, I ended up working for mayor at the time, Dirk Kempthorne, I had just graduated college and he was a mayor of Boise and running for U.S. Senate. It was my first job straight out of college. He was on the Armed Services committee  and so I was exposed to the military a lot, my father was a Marine Corp officer and served in Vietnam, my uncle was killed in Vietnam, and I actually have my great-great grandfather’s Civil War musket so we have a long lineage of serving, we’ve served in every war that I’m aware of, decided it was my time to join the military, went into the Marine Corp as an officer,