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BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. -- It is often said to find a rainbow you must first weather the storm. For the small island territory of Puerto Rico, there couldn’t have been a larger storm to weather than Hurricane Maria, the Category 5 hurricane that ravished the island in September 2017.
For many Puerto Ricans, it was difficult to see any silver lining in the situation, but for Airman 1st Class Josue Ayala Perez, a petroleum oil and lubricant fuels distributor with the 2nd Logistics Readiness Squadron, the hurricane became a driving factor in a choice that would change his life forever.
“I had to make the decision,” said Ayala Perez. “Do I stay here and try to start again from the beginning, or do I just go.”
Ayala Perez grew up in the town of Utuado, Puerto Rico, where he worked multiple jobs and went to college, dreaming of earning a degree in computer science.
“I lost all three of my jobs,” Ayala Perez said. “Almost everybody lost theirs too and bills still needed to be paid. Finding work was difficult, and people were living off what others gave them. They were just trying to survive.”
Hurricane Maria was the largest storm to hit Puerto Rico in more than 80 years, affecting the entire island’s population of 3.4 million people. An estimated 2,975 lives were lost in the aftermath of Maria. After everything was all said and done, the economic and social impact the hurricane had on Puerto Rico was substantial.
“I had never experienced a hurricane of that magnitude and destructive force,” said Teresita Perez Milete, Ayala Perez’s mother who still lives on the island. “It caused a lot of anguish and fear of what it would bring us later.”
“Once it was over, everything was destroyed,” Ayala Perez said. “You’d see houses without the roof, floods, trees just flew away, people were dying.”
Faced with the reality of an arduous and bleak future of staying on the island, Ayala Perez decided that the Air Force offered him the best path to a brighter future.
“I’ve always had the thought of joining the military, but I always said that I’d join later after college,” Ayala Perez said. “The hurricane was a huge factor; after that, I knew I would join. I needed something to show me that I could have a good future again.”
Within months, Ayala Perez contacted his recruiters and started the enlistment process into the Air Force. He left for basic military training in September 2018, exactly a year after the hurricane altered his life.
“I believe that serving others makes us better people. I know that to move away from your family takes vision and determination,” Milete said. “Josue has those qualities and instead of feeling sad about his decision, I support his firmness, persistence and desire to follow a path which makes him a better person.”
The decision to join the Air Force has already positively impacted the life of Ayala Perez in his short seven months in the United States.
“I can see it already, I have money coming in every first and the 15th,” he said. “I have savings, I know I can go to college and get a house. I don’t have those worries about paying bills anymore.”
After the devastation that turned Ayala Perez’s life upside down, he embraced resiliency and the Air Force way of life and now plans to make a career out of his service.
“I think because of the situation I was in before, I know the opportunity that I have here,” Ayala Perez said. “It makes me take this more seriously, work harder, try to be a better person and not do something stupid that would get me kicked out of the military, because I know if I get out of the Air Force I’m going to struggle.”
Ayala Perez and the island of Puerto Rico weathered one of the deadliest storms in human history and instead of backing down they faced the storm head on. Ayala Perez used the hurricane to motivate him to find the beginning of the rainbow after the storm and a better way of life.
| Date Taken: | 04.09.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 04.09.2019 16:37 |
| Story ID: | 317488 |
| Location: | BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, LA, US |
| Web Views: | 54 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Hurricane Maria survivor joins Air Force: Barksdale airman turns tragedy into triumph, by SrA Jacob Wrightsman, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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