Friday at the Mill Creek-Norcross game, the father-son duo of Jed and Don Neff was honored by the Atlanta Falcons and the National Guard for their roles as Hometown Heroes. The Neff family has a long line of service in the military. The line includes his father, grandfather and his mother’s siblings. Neff’s father was a reservist, but he was actually a drill instructor during Desert Storm when Jed was just an infant and the Neff family was very young. Jed decided to follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps by joining the military shortly after graduating from Mill Creek in 2006. While his father was a reservist for 10 years, Neff was active duty during his years of service.
He was deployed to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring April 2008 and was there for 15 months until June 2009. For the first half of his time overseas, Neff had decent contact with his family through phones and the internet at the larger bases. However, during the second half of his deployment, he was lucky to contact his family once a week.
“I called if I got the chance,” Neff said. “Phone calls were much better just to hear your loved one’s voice.”
The majority of his time overseas was training police forces in different districts of Afghanistan. They were often called on to do other tasks too, though, whether it be patrolling an area, keeping guard, or even escorting explosive ordinance units from place to place. Neff says that he was fortunate to not be under direct fire during his time there, but that does not mean he did not see combat.
“We did have a lot of instances under patrol where we were hit with mortars and rockets,” he explained. “There were a number of occasions where our patrol would get hit and we would have to deal with civilian casualties.”
Neff came home and since then has gotten married and is now in school using the G.I. Bill. He is attending the Art Institute of Atlanta, one of the most prestigious music and production schools in the country. He hopes to work with production and post-production film. When not working on his degree Neff is spending time with his family, which has been with Mill Creek literally since day one. Neff’s father, Don, has been running the crew that tends Mill Creek’s athletic fields since the first game, and Neff himself helped build the new stands at the stadium in 2006. On top of Don taking care of the field, Neff’s mother Nora is an English teacher at Mill Creek.
Mill Creek, as well as the United States as a whole, is very lucky to have such outstanding citizens like the Neff’s.
Loading ...
