Ryan Mergen has been named Principal at Father Vincent Capodanno High, to begin this coming summer. Mergen is a former Green Beret and current active duty officer stationed at Fort Bragg. The board conducted a nationwide search and Erwin said they received applications from about a dozen strong candidates, several with military connections.
Capodanno High was founded by Army veteran Mike Erwin and is taking the long-range view of expansion. "We're not just interested in graduating kids who are smart," Erwin said. "We want kids who are growing intellectually, but also in that service, character and leadership mindset. We think that's so important that we have to measure it."
Mergen describes his own path to success as "the story of other people helping me, people who didn't have to, but helped me nonetheless to unlock my own potential."
"I don't think that soldiers have a monopoly on service and sacrifice, but if you spend time with them and don't understand what service and sacrifice are, especially during a deployment, then I don't know if you ever will." Mergen credits the soldiers in his platoon for saving his life after he took shrapnel to the stomach during his first tour of duty in Afghanistan. Read more.