LifeTimeline
Establishment of Patriot Guard Drill Team
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Establishment of Patriot Guard Drill Team
Fresh Meadows, New York
After years of deliberation and struggle, the coach and several team members vied for a fresh new start -- first and foremost by changing the team name from "Patriot Precision" to "Patriot Guard," the initials of which would decorate the exhibition units' helmets even today.
Patriot Guard, the name of the Francis Lewis High School JROTC armed drill team -- so called because it is attached to the program's "Patriot Battalion" -- would find use in the team's motto, "PG4Life." -
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"My Name is Victory"
New York, New York
Drawn by word of mouth, then-student journalist Adrian Fussell created a multimedia project of the struggles of the Patriot Guard during its six-month competition season. The final project, "My Name is Victory," won him the Ian Parry scholarship, displaying the Patriot Guard's distinct portraits in the International Center of Photography in Manhattan, London, and various other countries.
The resulting reportage, photo-essays and video from six months of trailing the team up and down the east coast, focused on the team's cultural diversity. The largely Asian and Latino students, children of immigrants or immigrants themselves, often attracted stares as whispers as they competed in Louisville, Kentucky and Daytona Beach, Florida. -
Establishment of Patriot Guard Drill Team Facebook Page
Fresh Meadows, New York
In a surge of the United States Military Cadet Command's budget cuts, Patriot Guard alumni banded together with the current cadets to create a Facebook page to find funding. The page would later find success in networking with the rest of the drill world, including the other schools and "For the Art, Drill" a business organization.
Many teams earlier in the year could attend neither the NHSDTC nor the Army branch Nationals due to lack of funding. Patriot Guard and its unarmed counterpart, Patriot Pride, scraped together funds from private donations, candy sales and last-minute funding from Cadet Command after much negotiation.
Two thousand and thirteen is to date the last time Patriot Guard was able to attend the Army Nationals.