In honor of recent Veteran’s Day, De Soto High School wants to honor those who served and are serving, some of those being our very own DHS Wildcats.

    Michael Sullivan is the journalism teacher here at DHS, but he also works in journalism in the military. He currently serves as commander of the 105th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment in the Kansas Army National Guard.

    Sullivan attended the University of Kansas, where he studied journalism originally to pursue a career in sports media relations. While working in the athletics department at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, he went back to school to acquire a teaching certification.

    “I kind of got burned out on the job. There was a lot of traveling, and I was away from home a ton. I started thinking about what I might want to do,” Sullivan said. “I began to explore it [the possibility of teaching] and next thing you know I resigned my position and applied to go back to school.”

Sullivan, who has been a Soldier for almost 21 years, was actually out of the military while he was back in school at Missouri State. He took the oath to join back up during his first year at DHS, about six months after Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Sullivan has spent most of his career working on the medical side of the military. However, several years ago he was selected to become a public affairs officer in the Guard.

“My commander in my medical unit actually recommended me for an army public affairs position knowing my background working in and teaching journalism,” Sullivan said.

    According to Sullivan, there are many similarities between teaching journalism and being a commander of a public affairs unit, one being the high school students and young Soldiers have a similar experience level.

   “Depending on the publication you work for, everyone is going to have their own style rules, but for the most part, journalism is journalism,” Sullivan said.

    During Sullivan’s service, he has come close to being deployed multiple times to different parts of the world.

    “About nine or 10 years ago we were supposed to go to Iraq, but it [the deployment] got canceled,” Sullivan said. “I’ve been alerted twice for the hurricanes recently over the last two months. If I spoke Spanish, there’s probably a good chance I’d be in Puerto Rico right now.”

    Being apart of the military takes a toll on Sullivan’s personal life. The unpredictability of his job not only affects himself, but his family most of all.

    “It’s scary knowing that he could leave at any time, but it makes me a proud daughter knowing that he’s serving our country,” said his daughter Issa Sullivan.

    As of right now, Sullivan is eligible for retirement but plans to stay active in the guard for the time being.. Next summer, he will leave command of the 105th MPAD and will go back to his army medical roots as a medical plans and operations officer.