![\"April](\"https:\/\/clemson.world\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Mullinax5.jpg\")
<\/a>April 29, 2016 – Jimmy Mullinax Professor of Military Leadership Lieutenant Colonel – Retirement Ceremony in Honor of LTC Jimmy Mulling, US Army Held in Tillman Hall auditorium<\/p><\/div>
\nAn extraordinary\u00a0U.S. Army career\u00a0came to an end this\u00a0spring as Lt. Col. Jimmy\u00a0Mullinax, commander of\u00a0Clemson University\u2019s Reserve\u00a0Officers\u2019 Training Corps,\u00a0retired on the same stage where\u00a0he was commissioned 21 years\u00a0earlier.
\nArmy officers do not get to\u00a0choose their assignments, so\u00a0getting orders to come back to\u00a0Clemson was a highly unusual\u00a0but serendipitous twist in\u00a0Mullinax\u2019s career.
\n\u201cHow do you get to go back to your alma mater?\u201d he asked during his retirement ceremony. \u201cI only have\u00a0one answer for that: God brought me back here. Because it wasn\u2019t my doing, and it couldn\u2019t have been the\u00a0Army because it made no sense. It was orchestrated for me to come back, and I\u2019m blessed to be here.\u201d
\nRetired Col. Eric Schwartz, who was assistant professor of military science for Clemson\u2019s ROTC in the\u00a0early 90s, returned to help retire the young officer he had mentored more than two decades before and\u00a0recalled the instantly recognizable potential of the young cadet he knew.\u00a0\u201cI wanted to tell stories about little Jimmy Mullinax when he was a cadet in the Army ROTC program, and\u00a0I was his instructor. I wanted to tell you stories about Jimmy getting lost in the woods, or showing up late for\u00a0physical training, or losing his weapon, or [being] afraid to rappel of a cliff \u2014 but I got nothing,\u201d said Schwartz.\u00a0\u201cFrom the moment he stepped out on the parade fields of Clemson he was a beautiful young man to serve\u00a0with. Everything about him represented what we believed were the core values of being a good soldier, a good\u00a0leader and a good American.\u201d
\nMullinax graduated from Clemson in 1994 with a bachelor\u2019s degree in industrial management and was\u00a0commissioned as a second lieutenant into the quartermaster branch (supply and logistics support), detailed\u00a0to the Air Defense Artillery Branch. He earned a Master of Military Studies from the Air University, Maxwell\u00a0Air Force Base, Ala. He went on to hold numerous positions of leadership in quartermaster and logistic\u00a0elements, including two tours of duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, culminating in an assignment\u00a0to Fort Knox, Kentucky, prior to returning to Clemson.
\nMullinax said it was a blessing to return to Clemson in a military capacity, because the school has such\u00a0a rich military history and goes out of its way to support its ROTC program.\u00a0He returned to the theme of being blessed throughout his remarks, emphasizing a point made at many\u00a0Army retirements; he only got through the last 21 years because of his faith and his family. He noted\u00a0that he and his wife, Angie, moved their family to nine different duty stations together over the course of\u00a0his career.
\nHe closed by addressing all the people who had taken the time to be there for this seminal moment in his\u00a0life. \u201cI started this saying I was blessed. I hope you can truly see why I\u2019m blessed. It\u2019s not about me. It\u2019s about\u00a0you and what you\u2019ve done in my life. You\u2019ve given me the best life I could ever dream of. Continue to support\u00a0our military men and women.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An extraordinary\u00a0U.S. Army career\u00a0came to an end this\u00a0spring as Lt. Col. Jimmy\u00a0Mullinax, commander of\u00a0Clemson University\u2019s Reserve\u00a0Officers\u2019 Training Corps,\u00a0retired on the same stage where\u00a0he was commissioned 21 years\u00a0earlier. Army officers do not get to\u00a0choose their assignments, so\u00a0getting orders to come back to\u00a0Clemson was a highly unusual\u00a0but serendipitous twist in\u00a0Mullinax\u2019s career. \u201cHow do you get to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":15881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[171,1937,2851,2852],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-15880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","tag-alumni-profile","tag-military","tag-summer-fall-2016","tag-summer-fall-2016-alumni-profiles"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/08\/Mullinax5.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15880"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}