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One became a Marine by accident. Another honors her late grandfather. A third worked in sexual assault prevention and response for two military services. Here are their stories.
There are approximately 700 military-connected students studying on Northeastern University’s 13 global campuses. Some are active service members, others remain in the National Guard or Reserves, and others still have moved on from the military.
“One of the many joys of working with these students is getting to see just how diverse they are, how varied their paths have been,” says Andy McCarty, an Air Force veteran who directs the Dolce Center for the Advancement of Veterans and Servicemembers (CAVS) at Northeastern. “They pursue the whole breadth of academic disciplines. It’s really wonderful watching them explore fields that are so unlike their military occupations.
“Society often speaks of veterans as a monolith,” McCarthy adds. “Our students disprove that each and every day.”
Northeastern will hold its annual Veterans Day ceremony at 2 p.m. EST Monday at the university’s Veterans Memorial on Neal F. Finnegan Plaza on the Boston campus. The event will be live streamed and retired Brig. Gen. John J. Driscoll of the Massachusetts Army National Guard will deliver the keynote address.
In honor of Veterans Day, here are profiles of three Northeastern students who have served.
Alexis Hormeku’s hero was her grandfather. She was living with him in their native Ghana until his death in 2016. One year later she moved to Massachusetts to reunite with her parents and younger sister. She attended college and graduated in legal studies in 2021.
Hormeku was accepted to Northeastern’s law school. To help with the costs she took the advice of a friend and sought financial support from the National Guard.
“My military obligation is one weekend a month,” she says. “I would say the service is what you make of it and I think that’s one thing my recruiter really helped me with. He was always telling me to think about, why are you doing this? I’m doing this because I want the military to help me pay for school and I can’t forget that. So even if it gets hard I can’t quit — because what is the ultimate goal? And I think that is what’s keeping me going.”
She had been inspired to enlist by her grandfather, who had been a lieutenant colonel in the Ghanaian army. Though the physical training has been difficult — “I’m not physically strong and I’m not the best when it comes to physical activities” — she feels a sense of kinship with her grandfather as she looks ahead to Veterans Day.
“My late grandfather had been in the military all his life,” Hormeku says. “Whenever I think of the military, I think of my grandfather and what he has done because he was the closest to me of anybody.
“And then I think about doing service for people and fighting for their freedoms and democracy and everything the country stands for,” she says of Veterans Day. “Because without our service members there would be no America, there would be no nation, there would be no safety. So it’s about honoring those who have laid their lives for us and those who are paving the way forward as well.”
Hormeku is unsure where a law career will lead her.
“I’m interested in ADR (alternative dispute resolution), I’m interested in compliance, I’m interested in elder law, I’m interested in many things,” Hormeku says. “And that’s the beauty of Northeastern is that I get to do my co-ops and figure out what exactly I want to do.”
She believes her military experience will help her.
“It has definitely helped me to be mentally stronger and physically stronger,” Hormeku says. “It has taught me that no matter how hard things are, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel and tomorrow is another day.”
Jonathan Sullivan says his initial attempt at higher education in 2006 was not going well.
“I was like, am I really going to fail out of another semester at community college?” he says. “And so instead of turning right to enroll in another semester of classes at the community college, I turned left to go to the recruiting station. I just kind of made the decision on the exit ramp.
“When I walked in the door, I saw there were Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. And now I was like, ‘Oh, man, I didn’t even consider what service I would join.’ The Marine recruiter’s office happened to be right by the front door and his office door was open. He said, ‘Hey, you! Get your butt over here!’ And that’s how I joined the Marines.”
Sullivan served for six years with year-long security postings at U.S. embassies in Beijing, Geneva and Caracas. One evening while on duty he came across a manual that had been left on the ground.
“It was a book about satellite dishes and it had all this crazy math in it,” Sullivan says. “I asked one of the embassy security technicians about it in the morning and he said, ‘We use it for communicating between the embassy and Washington, D.C.”
That was when Sullivan decided on his post-military career.
“From talking to that guy, I thought, cool, I’m going to go be an electrical engineer,” Sullivan says. “That’s how I ended up at Northeastern.”
He graduated summa cum laude in 2016 while earning multiple academic awards — then added a master’s in electrical and computer engineering last year. He is now pursuing a Ph.D. in computer engineering focused on AI-driven motion capture animation that will make him a triple-Husky.
“Obviously I was older and more disciplined because of the Marines,” Sullivan says. “Veterans Day means so much in terms of the relationships that I built over the years. It’s a different type of connection than people that you interact with who weren’t in the military.
“I had that huge transition in my life where I failed at a community college and then served in the Marines, which helped me grow up. Veterans Day reminds me of all that.”
Was joining the Marines the best decision of his life?
“It was a good decision,” he said in an interview one week before Veterans Day. “The best decision I’m going to make is on Friday when I get married.”
“I always wanted to be a cop growing up,” says Jersouk Touy, a Boston native. “I am first-generation American, my family is from Laos and I had a complicated upbringing with a lot of cultural conflicts.
“Through those conflicts, I would think there was something about state troopers and police officers — that they make a difference. So that’s what I wanted to become. And then I figured, why not get my school paid for and become a military police officer?”
Early in her career she met a master sergeant who opened up to Touy, explaining that she was a survivor of incest and sexual assault in her family. Touy soon volunteered to become a sexual assault victims advocate. By 2010, she was running a Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program for the National Guard.
“I did that for three years and then I was solicited to go work for the Air Force,” Touy says. “I became a dual soldier — I was a weekend warrior with the National Guard and full time for the Air Force. So I did that for 11 years and ultimately I got burnt out.
“The lows were that you feel it. You can understand where they are coming from. Seeing someone in so much pain and being violated, I think a lot of people don’t understand that it’s a violation of the body. They can’t go home and shed their skin and put on a new coat of skin. They have to carry that. It really changes the dynamic of their lives.
“The highs of that work would be when I would see them become a survivor, when they would get their power back in some way, shape or form. I don’t take credit for that. It was all you — you’re carrying a whole lot of baggage and secrets that not everyone knows. To see them survive it and to be in a better place, it was very rewarding for me.”
After leaving the Air Force last year, Touy enrolled at Northeastern with the initial idea of pursuing a master’s in marine and environmental sciences. She is now considering a degree change to study project management.
“Professionally I decided to do something more aligned with my prior career as a leader and a sergeant,” says Touy, a single mother of two children ages 9 and 12.
She says Veterans Day means a lot to her in the context of her career.
“I think about the good times and the camaraderie,” Touy says of Veterans Day. “I feel emotional just thinking about it. It’s that we [as veterans] have been there for each other. I think about the people who have been there for me, the people that I’ve maintained the friendship with throughout these years.
“There’s a difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day. I think about Veterans Day knowing that we survived these experiences with each other and we’re celebrating that.”