Skills helpful in Maj. Mark Hopkins’ first combat deployment

By La Risa Lynch
Last October, Mark Hopkins sat behind a desk at his Hyde Park business providing legal service for identity theft victims. By month’s end, he was dressed in army fatigue toting a assault weapon in a war zone half a world away.

Hospkins’ tour of duty to Afghanistan was his first combat deployment in his 25 year military career. When asked if he was alarmed about his deployment, Hopkins, a major in the Army Reserve, said fear is somewhat inevitable.

“We are all scared, but the only difference is you don’t let being scared stop you from doing the things you need to do,” said Hopkins, 45, who’s nearing the end of a year’s deployment in Afghanistan.

“Courage is not the lack of fear. Courage is having fear and doing it anyway,” he added.

Hopkins is in charge of vehicle maintenance and oversees civil contractors — mostly retired military personnel in repairing blast absorbing M-RAP or “mine resistance attack protected” vehicles.

The huge armored monster trucks with a v-shaped haul can resist road-side bombings and ambushes. His unit also outfits soldiers with military gear and equipment once they arrive in Afghanistan.

Hopkins’ deployment was to support President Obama’s troop surge strategy to bring 30,000 additional forces to Afghanistan. There are 120,000 troops in the country. The goal is to stabilize the area.

The effort is helping, “but it is just a slow process,” said Hopkins, who splits his time between Camp Marmal and Camp Spann in the Mazar-I-Sharif region in Afghanistan.

“It is moving slowly, but it is necessary in order to implement (Obama’s) strategy,” he said. “It takes a awhile to bring 30,000 people into one place.”

The country is becoming more stabilized despite news reports, Hopkins added. The news often paints a dire picture of the war efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Hopkins contends Americans should watch the news with a grain of salt.

“What you hear in the news is what happened at one place at that one particular time,” he said. “It does not mean it is happening every where in Afghanistan.

“It is no different than a shooting that goes on in Chicago,” Hopkins added, referring to news reports on efforts to bring in the National Guard to stop gun violence. “It is probably safer here than it is over there.”

Still Hopkins witnessed a car-bomb explosion as the vehicle tried to enter a base. The blast caused significant damage and casualties. The explosion’s sound, Hopkins said, was beyond deafening.

“It was a sound so loud that it shakes you where you are at,” he said. “You think the bomb is on you.”

But in the chaotic moments of war, Hopkins finds solace in a good book and talking to his wife and three children back home.

“That keeps me on par. That keeps my head in the right place,” said Hopkins, who is reading Napoleon Hill’s 1000-page tome “Law of Success.” The book outlines steps to achieve personal success, wealth and well being.

Off the battlefield, Hopkins is an educator by trade. He taught at Chicago Vocational Academy and Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep High School on the city’s south side. He even did a stint as a professor at the University of Iowa before being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug.

He became an independent contractor with Pre-Paid Legal Services four years ago. And both his military training and business acumen benefit each other on and off the battlefield. He said the structure and discipline learned in the military helped him become more “self-directed.”

“Those skills you need no matter what you do in life,” the Woodlawn resident said.

His business skills taught him how to motivate people, which is essential when dealing with combat-weary personnel.

“Always praise progress no matter how small,” he contends.

Like most men and women who join the military, Hospkins saw it as a way to pay for college. As a graduate of Whitney Young High School on the near west side, Hopkins glimpsed a billboard advertising four-years paid college tuition in return for one weekend a month and two weeks a year.

“I could do that,” recalled Hopkins who joined the National Guard in 1983. Nine years later he transferred to the Army Reserve.

However, Hopkins, a graduate of Chicago State University, never planned on making a career out of the military. It just happened that way.

“I really didn’t make a conscious decision to stay 20 years. It’s just one of those things where I never got out,” he said, adding that “you either get tired of them (the Army) or they get tired of you.”

When asked if he has grown weary of the Army, Hopkins quipped: “Ask me that two months from now.”

That’s when Hopkins tour of duty in Afghanistan ends.