Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Life’s been a bit of a whirlwind lately for Sweet Home High School graduate Manuel Robledo.
Newly married and barely settled into a new job, Robledo, of the Class of 1996, is heading for Afghanistan as a captain with the 2/218 Field Artillery, 41st Brigade Combat Team, of Portland, Army National Guard.
He is in his first year teaching history at North Marion Middle School, and was married just two weekends ago.
He will join some 1,200 troops called up from the National Guard to help train Afghan soldiers in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
“It seems like I waited so long to become a teacher, and now I have to put it off for another year and a half,” Robledo, 27, told the Woodburn Independent.
Robledo joined the National Guard after his first year of college at Portland State University, where he ran cross country and track. He was a top runner for Sweet Home, winning the district cross-country title in 1995 and still holds the school record of 3:58.54 in the 1,500 meters, which he set in 1996.
He graduated from college with a bachelor of science of degree in social science and attained the rank of sergeant in the National Guard.
“I think I was going to be a computer scientist, but I realized teaching was where I was supposed to be,” Robledo said, but instead of going straight into teaching, he was accepted into Officer Candidate School and spent a year and a half in training.
Having completed his officer traning and working on completing his master’s degree, he went to work part time with Wells Fargo, eventually becoming an assistant branch manager. He also spent time deployed to Hermiston, where chemical weapons are stored awaiting destruction.
North Marion School District hired him to teach at the middle school this school year, but “I missed the first month because of Katrina,” he said. He actually went to work teaching in October, but that ended in the middle of February.
“We’d known something like this was happening,” Robledo said of the Guard’s involvement in Afghanistan. “It was a question of who was going and what jobs were needed.”
He found out for sure he would be deployed to Afghanistan in November, but he didn’t know when.
Robledo had planned to marry Elizabeth Kearney, 32, next summer, but they moved that wedding date up to spring break and then to Feb. 18 after Robledo received his orders.
They were engaged in August after meeting at Elizabeth’s sister’s wedding, she said.
“We actually met at the altar.”
Her sister was marrying Robledo’s commanding officer.
“Our preference would have been a summer wedding, Elizabeth said. But with a deployment looming, they decided to move it to March and spend two weeks in Italy.
Elizabeth had everything set for the wedding, “and then we got the call,” she said. They moved the wedding date up again.
They came to Sweet Home last weekend for a local wedding reception.
Robledo left on Monday.
“It’s very difficult,” Elizabeth said of her new husband’s deployment. “I try not to think too far ahead.”
The Robledos have an older home in Milwaukie that they are remodeling as they can.
“That will keep me busy, and my job will keep me busy,” Elizabeth said. She is a marketing analyst with Freightliner Trucking Co.
“You’ve got to look at it short term,” Robledo said. He initially travels to Missouri for training, and the two expect to see each other a couple of times while he is there and before he leaves for Afghanistan.
Elizabeth takes some comfort that Robledo is not going to Iraq, but Afghanistan has similar dangers, with a growing resistance and roadside bombs.
“I’m obviously very proud of being in the military,” Robledo said, and he knows many Sweet Home natives who have gone to Iraq and returned already. “Everyone deals with it differently.”
Robledo’s mission will be in a small unit embedded with Afghan troops for training. They will teach techniques and strategy for planning and executing operations.
“I think it’s very important, very valid; and history will be the judge of whether we’ve done a good job,” he said. “Teaching people to provide for themselves or support themselves is good.”
The deployment will bring something to Robledo’s classroom when he returns, he said. How he will be able to use his experience in the classroom will depend on the grade level he teaches when he gets back to North Marion.
“You just kind of tie in that whole aspect of what our country’s founded on,” he said. Lessons can connect to the American Revolutionary War and whether Americas were “patriots” or “rebels.”
Robledo said his participation in Katrina relief efforts is another area in which he has participated in history.
“If I continue teaching and down the road I pick up a history book and see a picture of Katrina,” he’ll be able to point to it and say he was there, Robledo said.
“You can add reality to the classroom, make it more meaningful,” he said.
But that doesn’t make it easier to leave at this point.
“The best thing is knowing things are taken care of,” Robledo said. “If she was leaving me, I’d be a wreck. I wouldn’t make it to next week.”
He would be asking things like, “Where’s the toaster? What do I do?” Elizabeth said, laughing.