Marine Lt. Gen. Jerry Carter remembers the exact moment he knew his life had to change. In 1985, Carter was working at McDonald’s when a customer said she had accidentally thrown out her car keys. So, Carter’s manager asked him to look for the keys in the restaurant’s dumpster.
Carter spent about an hour rummaging through garbage. It was a hot summer day, and he ended up covered in lettuce and reeking of trash. Then his manager came out and apologized because he’d forgotten to tell Carter that the customer had found her keys in her purse.
“That was my last day at McDonald’s. I said, ‘I’m not going to live through another day like that. I’m worth more than that,” Carter recounted.
Without bothering to change his clothes, Carter marched straight to his local military recruiter’s office. About a month later, he arrived at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island in South Carolina to begin his four-decade career in the Marines.
Now the Marine Corps’ deputy commandant for information, Carter will return to Parris Island next week, which marks 40 years after he completed boot camp. He will speak to graduating Marines and their families on Sept. 4 at the Peatross Parade Deck.
“I appreciate being able to go back and allowing those new graduates to see what they can actually become,” Carter said. “In my wildest dreams, I would never have thought as I was walking through Parris Island at that time — even on graduation day — that it was possible to be a general officer, let alone a three-star general.”
Originally from York, Pennsylvania, Carter graduated from high school with a strong academic and athletic record, but he found that he had not been prepared enough to study mechanical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, he said.
“After about a year-and-a-half of getting really crushed and a 1.9 GPA, I had to drop out,” Carter said. “No financial means to keep me in college; no scholarship money; family couldn’t afford it. So, I went home.”
Without a college degree, he found his employment opportunities limited, so he started working at the McDonald’s at a strip mall — until the day he decided to enlist.
“I was frustrated,” Carter said. “I wasn’t qualified to do much of anything else. I wanted to join the military to see if I could find my way into a program that would allow me to go to college.”
He was not impressed until he knocked on the Marine recruiter’s door, he said. A gunnery sergeant looked up from his desk and stopped Carter from coming inside.
The office had a pull-up bar, and the recruiter said that if Carter wanted to talk about joining the Marines, he had to do 10 pull-ups first.
“He challenged me, and that’s how he got the hook in me,” Carter said.
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After scoring well on a test given to potential recruits, Carter said he wanted to pursue a career in the Marines related to business. However, the recruiter told him that he would have to wait three months before starting training for a military occupational specialty in administration.
Carter told the recruiter he wanted to start boot camp as quickly as possible, so he signed a six-year open contract and shipped off to Parris Island 30 days later.
“Six years is a long commitment, but what he said is, ‘it was guaranteeing me money that I knew would be dedicated to college,’ and that’s why I signed up,” Carter said.
Carter also knew that signing an open contract meant he would be assigned a job based on the Marine Corps’ needs, but the recruiter told him that with his scores, he would get the MOS he wanted.
“So, I stepped out on blind faith,” he said.
Carter went on to serve in the signals intelligence and electronic warfare field as both an enlisted Marine and as an officer following his commission in 1992.
His decision proved to be a turning point in his life. He said the Marine Corps instilled in him a sense of pride and duty along with a newfound confidence. It also allowed him to go back to college and attend Harvard University as a fellow, twice, without incurring any debt.
At Parris Island, Carter learned the importance of becoming part of a team and following orders, he said, adding, “Today, I think I’m a better officer because of what I learned as a young enlisted Marine.”
As he prepares to return to Parris Island 40 years later, Carter has a message that he wants to impart to the graduating Marines.
“If you can make it through boot camp — how tough it is, how much pressure we put on them — you can do anything you want in the world,” Carter said. “And I truly mean that.”
