Tucker Ingenthron followed in family footsteps to a life of service.

Ingenthron has served in the Minnesota National Guard, with pride in that endeavor instilled by his grandfather and an uncle. He then followed his grandfather’s and father’s footsteps into serving the community as a lineman.

He currently works as an apprentice lineman at Pierce Pepin Cooperative Services. He was raised in Montana and went to school there to be a lineman and moved to the area for family reasons. He started at Pierce Pepin in March and loves the company’s dedication to making the many communities it serves better.

“I love it there,” said Ingenthron. “I really like the diversity within the county. Obviously, doing line work, you’re working outside in the elements. I really like the diversity of this area, the farmland by Prescott and River Falls, the bluff near the river, and then you get out to the Arkansaw and Durand area, and there’s valleys. I really, really enjoy the area that I work in. Our linemen here are a pretty tight knit group. It’s great.”

Ingenthron knew at a young age after listening to his grandfather talk about his service in the Military Police in World War II and the start of the Korean War that he wanted to serve.

“I remember him always telling me stories about that when I was young,” he said.

The defining factor in his young life that stuck in his mind was 9/11.

“It’s probably a cliché thing, but I remember 9/11 vividly. I was, I think, in third grade. I remember watching it on TV, and I remember I came home and told my mom, ‘You know, someday I’m going to go fight. I’m going to go fight the people that did this to us.’ I joined my senior year in high school. Ironically, I landed in Afghanistan on Sept. 11 in 2013,” Ingenthron recalled.

After his enlistment in the National Guard in 2011, he attended boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood. He went on for Advanced Individual Training as a combat engineer. He recently was promoted to Staff Sergeant with the Minnesota National Guard B-Company, 334^th Brigade, Engineer Battalion (Red Bulls). He intended to reup when his current enlistment ends to achieve 20 years with the National Guard.

His time in Afghanistan included some harrowing duties.

“I enlisted as a combat engineer. Basically, we do what the infantry does. We do all those skills, but then we also work with explosives, anywhere from mine fields to urban breaching to wire obstacle breaching,” he said. “Then, as the counter insurgency era of the war kind of became a thing, they realized they needed route clearance, so they utilized route clearance squads, which is what I did when I was there.”

While working in that capacity, Ingenthron suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) when an IED exploded under the vehicle he was in. He received a Purple Heart but still has lingering effects from the injury and experienced post-traumatic stress disorder after returning home.

“We drove the road. We’d get a mission set, whether we cleared main roads or secondary roads, and we just drove along, and we cleared them. Our equipment was set up that some of our vehicles had ground-penetrating radar, so they can scan the road and see if there’s anything underneath. That was our primary job there,” he said.

The unit found close to 20 IEDs in Afghanistan.

“We had three of four vehicles take a detonation, including mine,” he said “There’s so many elements to counter IEDs, because they’re pretty ingenuitive, ironically. They dig them under the road, as we started defeating them. Then they turned to putting them in culverts, and we started to find them that way. So then they were going into the culvert and digging them under the road. We had to put in these carpet denial systems. A lot of elements go into it, from taking fire from enemy to looking for IEDs at the same time.”

Looking back, Ingenthron wouldn’t trade his military experiences for anything.

“When I enlisted, I was excited. It’s what I wanted to do. I was glad I got the opportunity.  Our employment was taxing for some of us. Our base got attacked at one point, and then I took my hit. I got hit in April, right before we were coming home. At the end, it was like, let’s wrap this up. Let’s get home. It’s been a year, and I’m ready to see family and friends and not be in a sandbox anymore. It was a relief to be home, but also there’s something you could be proud of and look back on what you accomplished and everything we did,” he said.

Ingenthron urges young kids to consider the military and start with a recruiter.

“If the military is your passion, and it’s something you want to do, I say go for it. There are so many different avenues,” he said.

The National Guard, he feels, lets him serve his country and have a life outside the military as well.

“If you want the balance of serving your country but yet being able to have a normal civilian life, I’d say go with the Guard,” he said. “There’s things you can do within the military that will transfer to the civilian side. Obviously, for me, there’s not a lot I can do with working with explosives every day, but it’s something that less than 1% of Americans can do, and it’s an honorable thing. For young people, convincing parents is usually the hardest thing to do, but it can open so many doors for you. It gives you leadership skills. You learn how to work with a team. You learn work ethic. It’s a great experience. It’s not for everybody, I can say that for sure.”

And as a third generation lineman himself, he’s looking to help build the next generation in that field.

Area technical colleges have excellent programs and companies like Pierce Pepin have great internship programs.

“You really just get immersed into line work, really get exposed to it, get the foundation of being the lineman built up,” he said. “It gets your foot in the door. It’s a good resume builder.”