On April 5, 1937, Colin Powell was born into the world by his two parents Luther and Maud Powell. Colin’s parents, immigrants of Jamaican, raised Colin throughout his childhood in South Bronx, neighborhood of New York City. Powell would then attend New York’s public schools throughout his childhood and would graduate from Morris High School in 1954. During high school, Colin did not have any direction on what he wanted to do in life. Colin Powel decided to attend college at City College of New York and where he first started to begin his college education in geology. It was during his time at college where he was introduced the military with the ROTC or the Reserve Officer’s Training Course. Powell realized that this was the direction he wanted in life. Upon graduation at City College of New York in 1958, he was in charge as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. While assigned in Massachusetts in Fort Devens, Colin Powell met Alma Vivian and quickly started a family with three children, Michael, Linda and Annemarie. During the year of 1962, where Colin married Alma, Colin was discharged by President John Kennedy to South Vietnam. He and 16,000 other advisors began there 2 year tour but while Colin was patrolling a border along Vietnamese, he was injured by a punji-stick booby trap that left him with infection in his foot, making this shorting his first tour. Powell later received a Purple Heart and then a year later a Bronze Star for his tour of duty. Colin Powell would later return to Vietnam as a major in 1968 to 1969 as the Americal Division 23rd Infantry Division and soon be assistant chief of staff of operations for the Americal Division. Colin would then again be injured during his second tour by being in a helicopter crash. He was also awarded for saving three other people in the crash, including a Major General, despite his own injuries he had. In all, Colin Powell received 11 military medals during his time in the service. After his time in Vietnam, Colin Powell went on to attend George Washington University in Washington, D.C. During this time, Powell would receive a Master of Business Administration degree and would also serve a White House fellowship under the direction of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1973. Colin was in charge of the Office of Management and Budget and made notice to Frank Carlucci and Casper Weinberger. Both these men served as secretary of defense and national security under the Reagan administration. Regularly, they would meet with Colin on certain operations and ask for advice on many situations they brought to the table. Colin Powell knew that he wanted to keep working to get higher ranking in the military and that soon came in 1973 when he served in Korea as a battalion commander. After realizing the responsibilities that Powell had in Korea, Colin was asked if he would take charge as a staff job at the Pentagon. He was then promoted to brigadier general of the 101st Airborne Division. This soon caught the attention of Frank Carlucci, who asked Colin to help him at the Department of Defense during the switch between the Carter to Reagan administration. This was after Colin was promoted to major general of the deputy secretary of defense and secretary of energy. Powell also helped Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger as a senior military aide in coordinating the attack of Granada and bombing on Libya. Colin Powell became a security adviser in 1987, and held that position during the time of the Reagan administration. Of all the things that Powell had accomplished during this time, he first controlled the policy and technical advisers during Reagan’s administration meetings with people such as President Gorbachev and his conference leaders. Their main focus during this time was to protect the pro-Communist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Dispute and numerous investigations lead to the discovery that the administration had planned to ship illegal
