From Commencement to the Army: A ‘sense of obligation’

A few hours after Commencement, Greg Colella ’12 exchanged his graduation robe for military dress blues and swore an oath to support and defend the Consti­tution. As a second lieutenant in the Army, he will report to Fort Benning, Ga., in September for armor school, and he has joined a National Guard unit based in Philadelphia. “Hope­fully I’ll be able to go to Afghanistan,” Colella said. 

Colella is one of five members of the graduating class — along with Thomas Boggiano, John Caves, Derek Grego, and Ernie Wang — who spent their years at Princeton as members of the Tiger Battalion of ROTC. They became Army officers June 5 at a commissioning ceremony held in the faculty room of Nassau Hall, attended by President Tilghman and about 130 family members and well-wishers. 

Above, Thomas Boggiano ’12 gets a handshake from Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Bentow after receiving his first salute as an officer.

Colella is the third generation of his family to join the military. Still, his decision was not easy for his mother, Terry Donovan, a former Navy nurse. “I probably did try and talk him out of it sometimes,” she said. “The safety part of me — the mom part of me — says no, but the part of me that encourages my kids to be independent and make a contribution says you’ve got to be proud of him.”

Wang joined the Army to give back to the country that welcomed his parents — immigrants from Taiwan — and pro­vided his father with funding to attend ­medical school. At the end of the cere­mony, Wang’s parents stepped forward to pin the epaulettes ­representing the second-lieutenant’s rank on their son’s ­uniform. 

“As parents, we always worry about putting our son in harm’s way, but this was something he wanted to do,” said Wang’s father, Henry. “He feels a sense of obligation.”

The parents of Greg Colella ’12 proudly pin epaulettes on the uniform of their son, a second lieutenant.

PHOTO: SAMEER A. KHAN