T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY — Shawn Woods, a 1994 MHS graduate and U.S. Army veteran, currently serves as the production manager at the PCA plant in Marshalltown.

Shawn Woods was a 4.0 honor student at Marshalltown High School who likely could’ve attended the college of his choice upon graduating in 1994, but as he admitted, he had no idea what he wanted to do for a career. Instead, he embarked on a four-year journey in the U.S. Army, citing his family’s history of service between his grandfather (WWII), his uncles (Vietnam) and his brothers, one of whom was involved in Desert Storm.

“I wanted to do college but I didn’t know what I wanted to be like most people didn’t know what they wanted to be, so I didn’t wanna get a big debt,” he said. “And the GI Bill was out there, so I actually joined the military for the college.”

After signing up at 17 with his parents’ permission, he completed basic training at Fort Sill in Lawton, Okla., and from there, he entered the Ordnance Corps, working on missile systems for the Bradley fighting vehicle in Huntsville, Ala.

“There wasn’t a lot of technology. There weren’t any cameras. The night vision was just starting to come into play, so I was working on that. I went through a six-month training on that with a secret security clearance,” he said.

From early 1995 to early 1996, Woods was stationed in Fort Stewart, Ga., and he was getting ready to go to the National Training Center in White Sands, N.M., when he found out he was going to Korea instead. He spent a year there and got “a different life experience” keeping the peace in a conflict that has technically never officially ended between the now separate countries of North and South Korea.

He remembers visiting some of the historical sites associated with the conflict and the building where peace was negotiated, and then, for his final year, he returned to the U.S. and was stationed at Fort Drum in Watertown, N.Y. By 1998, he knew he was ready to start a family and had already begun taking correspondence classes through a college in Buffalo to further his education.

“I knew when I got to Fort Drum, my next orders were going back to Korea, and I’d already started school. So I wanted to get out then and try something new,” he said.

By May of 1998, Woods, who now resides in Melbourne, was back in Marshalltown, and he quickly secured a job at the place where still works today, Packaging Corporation of America (PCA). He was told to arrive at 6 a.m. on his first day. In typical military fashion, he was there by 5:30.

Today, Woods serves as the production manager at PCA, and he’s an avid sports fan and family man. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was still on inactive reserve in the Army, and he still remembers receiving a call that night. He was told they would be in touch, but he never got the call to get back to active duty.

“I was ready to go; my wife, not so much. I had a young baby and another one on the way, but I was ready,” he said.

Woods has respect for all veterans who have served their country under a variety of different circumstances, but while he was prepared to go into combat, he still feels thankful that he never had to do it.

“Most of the people in my generation don’t really talk about it. We’re kind of, when we’re in, we thought we were bad, we can do this, and then we got out and 9/11 happened and we’re seeing all these people go to war. And we’re not as bad as we thought,” he said. “Maybe our contribution wasn’t as good, but as I get older I realize we were ready to go. It just didn’t happen, and thankfully it didn’t happen. And I wish the people that were there in Afghanistan and Iraq didn’t have to do that because a lot of those people — you don’t get over that. You see things.”

Nonetheless, he’ll always be thankful for the structure and discipline he learned in the Army, and he’s been able to apply those lessons to a successful career in business in the same community where he was born and raised.