Cherry Point

Cherry Point is the North Carolina base that frames the closing stretch of J.D. Vance’s four years in the United States Marine Corps. It became the site of an unexpected public-affairs responsibility, then the place from which he set out for civilian life and college. In the memoir, the base links a demanding final assignment to a larger change: Vance left the Marines with a clearer sense of what he wanted and how to pursue it.

Setting and Assignment

Vance worked in public affairs at Cherry Point, where senior Marines served as liaisons with the press. The base’s media officer was a captain who had quickly fallen out of favor with senior leadership. Although the captain was eight pay grades above Vance, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan left no ready replacement when the officer was dismissed. Vance’s boss therefore assigned him to serve as media relations officer for the next nine months, through the end of his service, at one of the largest military bases on the East Coast.

The assignment was a sharp escalation in responsibility. Vance had grown used to the sometimes-random nature of Marine Corps postings, but he was unprepared for live television interviews and the exposure that came with the press being public affairs’ most consequential audience. Early mistakes included allowing photographers to photograph a classified aircraft and speaking out of turn at a meeting with senior officers. His boss, Shawn Haney, corrected him and coached him on building relationships with reporters, staying on message, and managing time. Vance improved; when hundreds of thousands of people came to the base for its biannual air show, the media-relations work went well enough to earn him a commendation medal.

Departure and Transition

A few days after his twenty-third birthday, Vance bought an old Honda Civic, collected his discharge papers, and made one last drive from Cherry Point to Middletown, Ohio. The departure closes his Marine Corps chapter in a concrete way: the base is not merely the setting for his last assignment but the starting point of his return to civilian life. Three weeks later, he was due to begin classes at Ohio State.

The contrast between the young man who had enlisted and the one leaving the base gives Cherry Point its wider significance in the memoir. Vance had joined partly because he was not ready for adulthood and did not know how to balance a checkbook, much less complete college financial-aid forms. By the time he drove away, he says he knew what he wanted from life and how to get there. Cherry Point thus anchors both the end of his military service and the practical next step made possible by the discipline and experience he had gained.