Page 54 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2022 - Online Magazine

Roberto Adame
hortly after graduating
from Lubbock High School,
SRoberto Adame found
himself motivated to serve
his great nation by joining the
Army. Enlisting at the age
of 20, he began his military
journey at Fort Polk, Louisiana.
It was a choice that would
eventually become a career
that would lead him on several
journeys, meeting many people
of all walks of life. “I wasn’t
doing much good here, just
partying and drinking. I wasn’t
going forward. So, when the
opportunity came up, I went,”
Adame said about enlisting
shortly after high school. That
decision transformed his life and
altered his future, as he would
then go on to spend four years in
the military and 18 years in the
reserves.
54 Lubbock Senior Link
Living His Best Life
By James Villanueva
Adame added that he had Sergeant with sixty personnel
several family members under him. It was on this
who had served before mission that Adame said he
him who also inspired his had an epiphany on how he
decision, including his would choose to live his life. He
father who served in the said that he was helping build
Navy during WWII. His a school when he saw a child
stepson John Flores served with no legs in the war-torn
22 years in the US Navy. region playing with a toy car.
“He was just a child,” Adame
One particular mission said. “He was just playing with
Adame remembers fondly his car like any other child. He
was Operation Safe Haven, could have felt sorry for himself;
a refugee camp that housed he could have been sad about
more than 26,000 Cuban what had happened to him or
refugees who were rescued where he was living, but he
from the seas after fleeing didn’t look upset about that or
Castro’s regime. In order question anything about it. He
to accommodate those was just playing and living in the
leaving Cuba, Adame said moment, and I thought, ‘Man, if
that many of the soccer we could all just live that way.’”
fields were transformed
into camps. Aside from Adame said that this type of
meeting the basic needs of gratitude for living the best
the refugees, Adame said life we’ve been given is what
that what was also important helped him recently when he
was making sure their social lost his wife. Knowing his wife
since childhood and married for
and emotional needs were met;
he was able to listen to many twenty years, Adame emotionally
different people and relate to said that losing his wife was his
many of their stories. “I was own personal war he had to face.
able to help make a difference No stranger to grief after losing
for people; their health and his mother at the young age of
education and well-being were seventeen, Adame said the death
taken care of,” he said. of his wife was a different kind
of pain, and he misses her every
Adame later went on to serve day but takes comfort in the
in Honduras, Guatemala, El memories they shared, including
Salvador, and Panama. In El a trip to Hawaii they once
Salvador, he taught three classes experienced.
of civil affairs. He also graduated
from five military occupation “We can’t blame everything on
specialty schools during his God,” Adame said. “I was sad
service. when my wife passed away,
but I woke up one morning and
Later, he was called to serve in wanted to be a better person, and
Operation Desert Storm on a I know He [God] wanted to make
medical mission and to build me a stronger person.”
schools. He was a Platoon