Marine 1st Sgt was "small and kind of wimpy"

Patriot Profiles: ‘You wouldn’t last five minutes in the Marine Corps’ 
First sergeant went from ‘small and wimpy’ to becoming senior enlisted adviser in a supply battalion
Del Mar Times
By Jeanne McKinney
Dec. 4, 2014

USMC 1st Sgt. Christina Grantham at Camp Pendleton. — Jeanne McKinney

This column presents “Patriot Profiles” to provide readers insight into the lives of our country’s heroes.

Although the world may take little note of one Marine, his or her role is no less diminished. Willing to lead and be led, learn, toil — even wash themselves in combat’s blood — each Marine is an integral cog in the human freedom machine.

First Sgt. Christina Ann Grantham had no intention of fitting into that. She was her high school salutatorian, and a local news reporter asked her, “You’re so accomplished — what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go out and enlist in the Marines,” she said jokingly, because her father was a Marine and she thought that would be funny.

Grantham went on to college to be a teacher. After her first year, she found it boring — not challenging or interesting, and no laughing matter. The mid-’90s Marine Corps advertising campaign worked on her. A knight wielding a sword and a guy climbing a mountain appealed because she saw herself as “small and kind of wimpy.” She thought, “You wouldn’t last five minutes in the Marine Corps.”

“Maybe you can be one of us,” said an ad slogan. She said, “Oh, yeah.”

On Nov. 10, 1997, the Marine Corps’ anniversary, Grantham signed up. Now a first sergeant in Ammunition Company, 1st Supply Battalion, Combat Logistics Regiment 15, Grantham is a senior enlisted adviser to the Company Commander (CO).
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