USC veterans share their stories, express gratitude for opportunity to serve

With the theme of “Embracing Opportunity: A Journey of Gratitude” as their guide, more than 250 Trojans gathered at Tommy’s Place on USC’s University Park Campus on Tuesday to celebrate and honor the service of USC veterans and members of military.

“Thank you so much for your lives of service,” USC President Carol Folt said from a stage decorated with red, white and blue balloons and flags from the six branches of the military. “It’s really my honor to be with you all today to celebrate the incredible strength and vibrance of USC’s veterans community.”

At the start of her remarks, Folt called for a moment of silence to honor Lt. Cmdr. Lyndsay “Miley” Evans, the Trojan alumna who died during a training flight near Mount Rainier in Washington last month. In 2023, Evans was part of the all-female Super Bowl flyover, a historic moment marking 50 years of women flying in the Navy.

“She was such a symbol for all of us — quite an extraordinary individual,” Folt said of Evans, who graduated from USC in 2014. “She’s remembered always as a trailblazer and a dear, dear friend.”

Approximately 350 undergraduate students and 750 graduate students currently enrolled at USC are either veterans or active-duty military, in addition to about 160 military dependents.

“It’s our responsibility and our privilege to be helping you … and our hope is that you’ll form tight-knit bonds here like you’ve made elsewhere,” Folt said as she touted the work of the USC Veterans Resource Center, the formation of JAMS (Joint Assembly for Military-Associated Students) and the launch of the Veterans Success Program.

USC Veterans Resource Center Director Christopher Meraz, who emceed the event, thanked Folt for “continuously creating new programs and resources for our military and veteran students, including academic, financial and wellness supports.”

How the military shaped them

The event’s special guest speaker was U.S. Army veteran and USC alumna Renata Simril, president and CEO of the LA84 Foundation, which runs youth sport programs across eight Southern California counties.

“The gratitude I have for the lessons that I’ve learned and for the service members that I served with, still sit with me today,” Simril said to the audience. “Thank you to the men and women in this room who have served our country with distinction and with honor. I’m grateful to be in a space with all of you for Veterans Day this year.”

Simril said last week’s national elections had her thinking about how her military service “profoundly shaped my understanding of who I am, how it expanded my identity, my sense of purpose and, most importantly, my sense of humanity.”

After joining the Army at 17, Simril said that as a Black American and as a woman, she came face-to-face for the first time with challenges she had not anticipated.

“I was in a space where race and gender weren’t just part of my identity, they were the thing that people saw first,” she said. “I learned … what it meant to serve, to defend and to represent something larger than myself.”

Junior Fabian Francis of the USC Marshall School of Business was the event’s featured student speaker. A U.S. Marine rifleman from 2017 to 2021, Francis is now president of the Veterans Association at USC and works part-time at the USC Veterans Resource Center. He said his campus involvement has allowed him to give back to the community while maintaining a 4.0 grade point average the past two years.

“I’m grateful to be able to seize the opportunity of education and utilize my veteran education benefits here at an amazing school,” he said. “Some of us come from low-income backgrounds and are first-generation students. The military has allowed us to develop the character to overcome these obstacles and become who we are today.”

Embracing the theme of the event, Francis said he “will continue to embrace opportunities in the spirit of gratitude.”

USC veterans celebration: Appreciating the meaning of Veterans Day

Among those enjoying the speakers and a lunch of wraps and salads from California Chicken Café was graduate student Ryan Mangum of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, who served more than eight years in the U.S. Army. Mangum said he spent Veterans Day this year reaching out to those he served with.

“I think a lot of veterans generally don’t like to talk about their experiences except with each other,” he said. “I like to remind myself to call a bunch of my old soldiers or old mentors and just spend the day talking to people and catching up.”

Another attendee, graduate student Margaret Smithers of the USC Gould School of Law, served four years in the U.S. Navy before resuming her college education. Coming from a military family, Smithers said she grew up believing that the service was important and wishes more people felt that way.

“Now as a veteran, I think a lot of my peers think that it’s really abnormal that I’ve served,” she said. “I feel like we should definitely break that stigma — especially as women. I don’t think it should be weird or you should be seen as different for serving. There should be a sense of pride in it, and it should be more normalized.”

USC Marshall graduate student Phil Payne, who served for 23 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, was in an upbeat mood as he stood in the food line with friends. Payne said he “couldn’t be happier” to be at an event at USC with his fellow veterans.

“It’s a pleasure to serve your country, and just to feel the recognition and the gratitude from people means a lot,” he said. “It’s a day to celebrate those who answered their nation’s call.”