NHS alum promoted to major

Alexis Barker
NLJ News Editor
 
David Crow, a 2005 Newcastle High School graduate, is an active-duty U.S. Army officer stationed in Fort Knox, Kentucky, was promoted to major on April 23.  
 After high school. Crow attended West Point, where he found that his NHS education held up nationally. His military journey has led him to several bases, jobs and countries. In his newest venture,  Crow will take on Belgium and fatherhood while working to maintain NATO’s technology support. 
Beginning his career in the cavalry, Crow spent his first three years based near Seattle. As a platoon leader, he took two trips to Afghanistan before changing careers to be a system engineer. 
While continuing his education, Crow spent time in Georgia and New York. During his three years at Fort Drum in New York, Crow said he worked in rapid deployment and signal support. 
“We would basically go anywhere with all the things you would expect to get from RT or Verizon. We could provide systems to anywhere in the world without power lines or phone lines, without infrastructure,” Crow said. “We ran the technology by satellite over the air.” 
In 2017, Crow’s career then turned to human resources – military-style – as he ran the third-largest data center in the Army at Fort Knox in Kentucky. According to Crow, his job was managing all human relations functions, whether the recruiter was stationed in Gillette or Florida. 
“We manage the applications to sign people up, all the way to the other end of the spectrum. If you have someone wanting a disabled veteran Purple Heart license plate in Wyoming, you reach into our database to make sure they are who they say they are. We cover everything from cradle to grave,” Crow said. 
As he prepares to head to Belgium as the chief technology officer, Crow is also preparing to become a first-time father. He and his wife, Laurel, welcomed their infant son, Luke Alexander, who arrived on July 14. 
“I am scheduled to report in September to NATO headquarters, where I will be performing the IT (information technology) support for any NATO joint operations,” Crow said. “I will be figuring out how to make Polish, Spanish and American networks talk.” 
He said that the job is both legal and political, and he is excited to tackle it. 
“I really wasn’t into IT at first, but I did get into it at West Point because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and you can always use IT,” Crow said. “Really, when you have been in Armor Branch for three and a half years, I realized I was pretty good at armor work and being a recon leader.” 
By tying the two together – technology and communication – Crow said he feels that he can best serve his country by using his good communication skills to better the technology. 
“We had people running communication systems that were not good communicators. I realized that in that position, with the IT background and having been a trigger puller with a maneuver background, I was a real customer. … I can talk to them, there are not a whole lot of people with that skill set,” Crow said
He added that it is about finding the right place for you, no matter who you are, and that it is normal to take eight to nine years or more between high school and finding that sweet spot in a career.
Overall, Crow expressed appreciation for his small-town upbringing and the schools in Weston County that allowed him to test an array of subject material 
“You couldn’t take calculus at NHS, but I got a breadth of experience at NHS, as good as anyone else. You do miss out on some things; you can’t specialize in certain areas but you also don’t get set on a one-way track. You don’t get pigeonholed as much in Newcastle. I think there we are taught that there isn’t only one way to do something and there is no false conception about knowing everything.”