i would like to nominate my best friend, Ssgt Hlodan. He has served in The United States Marine Corps for almost 14 years, deployed 5 times, done Embassy Duty, and was a Drill Instructor at MCRD San Diego. He serves as a role model to his junior marines and takes pride in giving the corps 100% in everything he does. He is the father of 3 young children, who's mother returned alone back to her native country Australia leaving him to raise a 2 yrs old,5 yrs old and 9 yrs old all by himself. With the high demands of being active military, it has been nothing short of a miracle he has been able to juggle the hectic schedule of being a single father and a stellar marine. He even found the time to get his BA in Psychology in hopes of one day using it to help troubled youth become the men he believes he can shape them into. His day begins as early as 4am sometimes. Getting lunches made,laundry done, kids up and ready for school and daycare. Drops them off by 6:30am so he can be to work by 7am. After work, he picks them up, goes home and makes dinner, cleans the house, does homework with them, bathes them, then finally at 8pm, they are ready for bed. After they go to sleep, he does whatever needs to be done for work, pt's most nights and gets everything ready for the next day. Then finally goes to bed around 11pm and starts all over again the next day. He rarely has any kind of social life but never once have I heard him complain or doubt his decision to take parenting on by himself. He is currently at an advanced artillery SNCO course in Oklahoma for 6 weeks, living with his children, in a hotel room, in order to meet his commitments to The Corps. The Marine Corps does work with a single father as they would a single mother. He is deployable and is scheduled for his 6th deployment in April 2015. I will be taking care of his kids while he is gone, since his original family care plan fell through, when his mom was diagnosed with cancer this past summer.