When Clint Romesha left the Army in 2011, he intended to live a life completely disconnected from the military, to put his time in the service in a box up on a shelf. He moved to Minot, North Dakota, with his wife and three kids to work in the oil industry.
“I was just a regular Joe,” Romesha said. “People probably knew I was a veteran, but we never got into any details of what I did or any of my actions or accolades.”
Being a regular Joe became harder in 2013, however, when Romesha became the fourth living Medal of Honor recipient from the Global War on Terror. “People came up to me and recognized me and wanted an autograph. My daughter just looked at me and said, ‘Dad, why do they want your autograph? Don’t they know you have terrible handwriting?’” Romesha said, laughing. He told her, “Not everybody gets to know dad the way you know dad. I’ll work on my penmanship, just like you have to do in school.”