Word: yasenak
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Fort Walla Walla is no more. A monument has replaced the doomed mission. But in the Eastgate Plaza shopping mall, just catercorner from Walla Walla's only De Lorean Motor Car dealership, the Army has stationed its missionary. Sergeant First Class Patrick Yasenak is a recruiter, and he has done very well. In fact, the Pentagon brass have made it official that he is exemplary, perhaps the best among their 4,797 Regular Army proselytizers: a few weeks ago, in a ceremony at his Eastgate Plaza office on a sunny day as crisp as cold soda, Recruiter...
...Yasenak, 33, looks like the kind of neighborhood soldier Norman Rockwell painted. Although he is a former drill sergeant, as a recruiter he thinks it best not to insist or shove. Rather, his specialty is a kind of sober sweet talk about experience and cash bonuses and duty. Last year he persuaded 47 men and women to join the Army and Army Reserve, more than half again as many as his quota. "No," he corrects with deadpan good humor, "we don't have quotas. We have missions." Over four years, he figures, he has signed up enough people...
Sometimes they phone him, unsolicited. One morning late in March, his first call comes in before 9. "Army opportunities, Sergeant Yasenak. May I help you?" A young woman, looking for the number of the Navy recruiter. "Sure, sure, no problem." The next one, a bona fide Army prospect, is guided to the office by way of a teen-age landmark, Taco Time, about 150 yds. away. When Yasenak gets a local collect call, a regular thing, he looks knowing and amused: the Washington State Penitentiary is in Walla Walla, and inmates must reverse all phone charges. "The guy said, Take...