Past Girls Stater and Active Service Member Comes to Speak

Today Courtney McCullough, a staff sergeant in the Vermont National Guard, came to speak to us about her experiences. In 2006, Sergeant McCullough attended Girl’s State and the following year she graduated from Missisquoi Union High School. She wanted to go to college but was afraid, like any other student, about paying back college loans. She decided to go to basic training at fort Jackson and then enlisted in the army as a mechanic to help pay back her college loans. She deployed to Afghanistan with a unit of 60, which included only four other women. While working with the citizens of Afghanistan, Sergeant McCullough learned her real motivation for serving in the army. She told us how she handed a Pop-Tart to a young girl, who was promptly shoved over by an older man and had her Pop-Tart taken from her. Sergeant McCullough said her deployment helped her not take things for granted and made her feel empowered.

One day during Sergeant McCullough’s deployment, a truck came into her shop that had been hit by a rockets and had severe damage. She told us she remembered cleaning the blood out of the truck and thinking that the person in the truck definitely hadn’t survived. The soldier in this truck, Scott McCullough, did survive, but the rocket had caused all of his internal organs to burst. He also had severe frontal cortex damage. He was airlifted to a hospital in Germany where he stayed in a coma for a month. Afterwards, he was transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He wrote to Sergeant McCullough inquiring about his truck. They talked, and he invited her to visit him in the hospital in D.C. during her leave. At first, she didn’t accept, because her leave was only two weeks long.  However, after convincing from both Scott and her brother, who knew Scott, she visited him in the hospital. They began dating after that visit. Once she returned from her tour, they decided to get married. Sergeant McCullough heard of a competition for the best military love story, which the winner would receive a $70,000 wedding. She wrote in, but didn’t believe she won until WCAX showed up on her lawn. She and Scott were married on December 15, 2013.