Logan Hiemstra relaxed as we sat in the SCTCC Veterans Center one morning during Veterans Voices month. I asked him if he wanted to chat in another location, but he was up for anything; I had heard this is his vibe.
Hiemstra has worked in the Customized Training department as Training & Outreach Manager since early 2022 after transitioning out of the military. His position focuses primarily on scheduling and arranging curriculum development for businesses.
His military background was somewhat traditional: after high school graduation, Hiemstra signed up for the Marine Corps. His family had a strong background in trades and unions and told him that it was good to have a focused path forward for a career. He didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do and thought after four years in the military, the perspective would help him sort it out.
“I was a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense specialist. Sounds super fancy, sounds super crazy, but we ended up doing a lot of what Customized Training does now for units over that timeframe,” he explained. For his first four years, he scheduled and conducted training, then deployed, and when he came back he recruited for three years. He wrapped up his time in the Marine Corp by going back to his original training work.
When Hiemstra transitioned out of the military and into civilian life, that was also somewhat traditional: he went into a career that he had experience in and he knew he liked. His position in Customized Training is similar to what he did while in the Marine Corps.
“As I was starting to transition out, I saw an open job posting for Training and Outreach Manager, and as I was reading through it, I said ‘hey, I’m already doing this stuff,’” Hiemstra told me. And so he applied, got the job, and managed to work through the transitional period.
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At this point in his interview, I was wondering what Logan’s feature going to be about. His experience as he told it so far had been pretty textbook. What was the hook?
It was time to suss it out.
I asked him to confirm the timeline of events after enlisting in the Marine Corps, and that’s when it started to bubble to the surface. It was about to diverge from the traditional.
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I asked Hiemstra about college, and when he said no, I asked if he’s going to use his GI Bill. The answer was much better than a simple yes or no.
“When I deployed, that is when everything kind of started coming up. It seems like in life, big events come in threes.”
He got married, deployed, and found out he was going to be a dad right around the same time. When he returned from his deployment, his daughter would be born.
“When I was finishing up my deployment, I re-enlisted and transferred my college benefits to my daughter.”
Hiemstra was in Kuwait when his daughter was born. His unit was offered the opportunity to get off the boat for about a week, at the end of which his wife at the time went into labor.
Thanks to technology, distance was not an issue in attending Alice’s birth.
“I sat on this big sand block barricade on FaceTime, and I watched my daughter be born. I tell you, I didn’t have any better seat in the house than being right there.” Hiemstra’s hands were outlining the barricade, holding the iPad, expressing themselves. “And when she was born, the sun was starting to crest over.”
I asked him about the first time he saw Alice in real life, and he said it was surreal. On his way back from deployment, they stopped in Hawaii, and his wife at the time brought her to meet him.
“Well, shoot. Now I have the responsibility to take care of this little thing and watch it grow and develop and invest time into it. And it was a really good, warm feeling seeing her for the first time,” Hiemstra remembered. “And as she grows and develops, she makes me proud every single day. There’s always something new in the world of Alice.”
Hiemstra’s days of things being always new may be behind him; the four years of perspective he was hoping to get by signing up for the military right out of high school turned into ten – and maybe different perspectives than he was anticipating.
Now he’s focusing on setting down roots. Alice is seven years old and getting involved in gymnastics. He’s buying a home in Annandale. While Hiemstra doesn’t have a college degree, he’s in the business of education and told me that he’s a big proponent of education.
“[SCTCC] has been a fantastic facility to further my education, further my knowledge, my experiences, opportunities that exist. And if it’s doing it for me, I have no doubt that this place can do it for everybody that walks through the doors,” he shared.
He does intend to go to college at some point but doesn’t have a timeline quite yet, and he is approaching the anniversary date in Minnesota State when he can use tuition benefits.
As for his GI Bill tuition benefits, how Alice uses those are up to her, but Hiemstra does have advice for her:
“She should take every opportunity to do something that is presented to her. That is what spurred me through my career. She’s getting to take on all these exciting, new opportunities that I’m super excited for her to have. And I want her to be hungry in that manner for knowledge, experience, opportunities that exist for her.”