Photo By Cpl. Katherine Keleher | Cpl. Derrik Nixon, a fire team leader with 1st Platoon, Engineer Company, Combat...... read more read more
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CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan - By the age of six, Cpl. Derrik M. Nixon, a fire team leader with 1st Platoon, Engineer Company, Combat Logistics Battalion 8, 2nd Marine Logistics Group (Forward), was telling anybody willing to listen that he was a future Marine.
“I always wanted to be a Marine,” explained Nixon, of Cincinnati. “Every time I saw the commercials, they were just awesome. I always just wanted to be the best, so I wanted to join the Marine Corps.”
Without a hint of doubt, less than a month after graduating from Elder High School in 2008, Nixon was standing on the infamous yellow footprints at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C.
“[The recruiters] said I was the easiest guy to recruit because I went right in and told them I wanted to join. They didn’t have to talk me into anything,” Nixon boasted.
After three months of recruit training and another month of training at the School of Infantry-East, Nixon landed feet first at the Marine Corps Combat Engineer School at Courthouse Bay, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C.
It was at Courthouse Bay that he started on his path of motivating others and making lifelong friends. Now, nearly three years later, he is still known by his fellow engineers as the "local motivator."
“I’m the loudest guy,” Nixon said with a smirk. “I’m never in a bad mood, and if somebody else is, it only takes me five minutes to bring them into a good mood.”
Raised mostly by his father, Brian, in the Queen City of Ohio, it was his dad’s character Nixon aimed to emulate.
“My dad is a jokester,” Nixon said. “If I was ever in a bad mood he would just mess with me until I started laughing again. I really aspired to be like him.”
It is the wit he got from his dad that he uses to keep his Marines’ morale up.
“I’ve known Cpl. Nixon my whole career. From boot camp, MCT, engineer school, the whole time we’ve been in the fleet and this is our second deployment together,” said Cpl. Ryan J. Henderson, who was raised just a few hours away from Nixon in Eastlake, Ohio. “He was quite the character when I first met him. I mean, he’s a hard guy not to like. He’s motivated about everything.”
Henderson, a squad leader with 1st Platoon, explained that Nixon is the Marine who brings up the morale of their entire platoon.
Regardless of what heights Nixon has to go to, he will do whatever it takes to keep motivation in the Marines’ souls, and smiles on their faces.
Nixon even went to the length of memorizing a speech Sen. John Glenn gave Howard Metzenbaum in 1974, after Metzenbaum asked Glenn how he could run for Senate when he’d never had a real job.
“I was getting my [mine resistant ambush protected all terrain vehicle] license and they were playing one of the little [motivational] videos before a class to get everybody back awake and in the mood to learn,” Nixon eagerly explained. “They played that John Glenn speech and I thought it was awesome, I thought it was crazy. I was getting goose bumps it was so motivating.”
Shortly before the class graduated from their licensing course, at Fort Bragg, N.C., Nixon realized his Marines were exhausted. That is when he fought stage fright and put on a performance his platoon would later consider legendary.
“I was trying to bring our guys’ spirits up and every now and then you know, it’s a little hard for me when they’re just so down,” Nixon said. “Either it’s a really bad day, or it’s hard work. So, I learned the speech. Once I said it, I just immediately noticed that everyone was in a great mood.”
Even now, in Afghanistan, Nixon walks around proclaiming, “John Glenn is a [physical training] god,” which is a popular quote among Marines attributed to a gunnery sergeant from 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Division during the 2010 battle for Marjah.
According to Henderson, their entire platoon automatically thinks of that speech when Nixon’s name is brought up.
“There is nothing he’s done that I remember more than that.”
Though, for Nixon, getting on a stage, delivering the speech and working to keep motivation high is just part of what he gets paid to do.
“I try to do the best. I’m a hard worker, I try to stay in shape, I try to make everybody happy. I always help with work, I help get people in good moods, I help clean up, I always share everything I get in packages,” Nixon bashfully said. “I like to be friendly and nice and to help everybody out.”
After building more than four camps and performing countless amounts of improvised explosive device detection sweeps during this deployment, Nixon is looking forward to returning home to his wife, Jessica, and their four dogs in Jacksonville, N.C., this summer.
| Date Taken: | 05.05.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 05.05.2011 05:22 |
| Story ID: | 69866 |
| Location: | CAMP LEATHERNECK, AF |
| Web Views: | 430 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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