From mortgage broker to medic: Missouri man receives Bronze Star

Pulaski County Daily News ^ | 7/22/2009 | Darrell Todd Maurina

[darrellmaurina]

SAINT ROBERT, Mo. (July 22, 2009) — A Waynesville High School graduate serving in Iraq received the Bronze Star with valor device for his role as a medic in rescuing Navy personnel from a burning explosive ordinance disposal vehicle that had been blown into the air by a roadside culvert bomb. Sgt. James H. Carter, 33, followed up on that 2007 award by recently being named Medic of the Year for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team in Iraq, to which he’s assigned as part of the 82nd Airborne in his second tour of duty in Iraq. Although he’s the son of a former Marine who transferred to the Army and retired after serving two terms during the Vietnam conflict, Carter didn’t originally plan a career wearing a military uniform. After graduating from Waynesville High School in 1994, he went to the University of Missouri in Columbia and became a mortgage broker in that city, continuing in that career until he began to reconsider the direction of his life after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. “Especially after 9/11, just realizing the vulnerability of the country, I took a step back, looked at my life, and asked what I had done. Everything I had done was geared toward me,” Carter said. “I was studying for a while and resisted but eventually I gave in. It’s the best decision I made in my life so far.”

[ASOC]

Medics - ya just gotta love ‘em.