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Mark Carter is a bearded, laid-back personal trainer who also gives kayak tours. Just a few years ago, he was a gung-ho, squared-away Marine Corps captain.
He took pride in running ultra-marathons with some of his Marines, and helped train the soldiers of the newly formed Republic of Georgia army. He still does the ultra marathons, but now he does them as a civilian.
Carter was born and raised on a farm near Milford, and it was clear to him early on that he wanted to be a Marine.
“I knew when I was in seventh or eighth grade that I wanted to go into the Marine Corps,” Carter said. “When I was in fourth grade, my dad gave me a web belt, a canteen cover and canteen, probably because I liked running around in the woods and he didn’t want me to die of thirst. I spent most of my evenings and weekends playing in the woods.”
His father was a Marine. “He was in from 1960 to 1964. As my Mom puts it, he went in a private and came out a private. He was promoted in between there. He jokes that he invented the Velcro chevrons.”
Carter’s father never told him to be a Marine. His only advice was that Mark should go to college first so he could go in as an officer. So Mark attended Virginia Military Institute, where he graduated with a degree in history and a commission as a second lieutenant in Marine Corps.
Although being a grunt in the infantry had an appeal, he wasn’t sure he wanted to do that for the rest of life. He eventually landed in public affairs school, where he learned how to tell the Marine Corps story to the public.
“In public affairs, I could go do the fun stuff, but I could still go home and sleep in my rack that night instead of sleeping in the mud,” he said.
Carter was stationed in Yuma, Ariz., in April 2000, when an experimental Osprey airplane crashed, killing 19 marines. As the public affairs officer, it was Carter’s job to describe the fatal mission.
It was a story that appeared in many newspapers, and Carter was interviewed on CNN and other networks.
Still, responding under pressure was not the most difficult part of the job, he said. “The hardest thing was a year later having the memorial and escorting the Marine’s families,” he said.
There were some bright spots to his tour in Arizona, where he met his wife, Nicole. “She frequented the coffee shop by my house. She wanted to go climbing, and the girl at the coffee shop was a friend of mine and said you need to talk to Mark. So we talked and went climbing,” he said.
The couple has a three-month old daughter, Jade, and Nicole now teaches photography two nights a week at Delaware Technical & Community College.
After Yuma, Carter went from posting to school and back to another posting. The closest he ever came to combat is when he served in a training force sent to help the army of the newly formed Republic of Georgia.
He said that training the Georgian Army was dangerous because of the language difficulties. “Sometimes in training, rounds were not shot at me on purpose, but sometimes they didn’t understand ‘cease fire.’ But that’s part of life in the military, that’s part of the inherent risk.”
Because their mission was newsworthy, Carter had to prepare the troops to be interviewed by journalists. “We sat down with the whole task force and talked about what our mission is. I didn’t tell them what to say verbatim. I would say this is our mission and that’s what we talk about. We don’t talk about our personal opinions about Donald Rumsfeld or the President. It’s irrelevant to the mission.”
His goal is to go back to Georgia, but without the uniform. “They had no clue what a kayak really was, and the rivers are just raging and untapped and have probably never been paddled.”
Carter has always been interested in kayaking, mountain climbing and fitness in general.
When he was in Yuma, he took pride in having the most fit public affairs shop in the Marine Corps. “I challenged some of my guys to run a 50-miler,” he said. It wasn’t an order, but if someone tried, he would buy the person a steak dinner. “One of them finished the 50 miles, others did 38, 32, 29 and 18 miles. And these were guys who had never even done a half-marathon,” Carter said.
As he kept moving up in the ranks, he realized that he would eventually have to do a tour of duty deep in the Pentagon and probably move farther and farther away from the Marines in field. Carter decided, instead, to move on.
His brother, John died of a heart condition, which also caused Mark to take a hard look at his life. “I enjoyed the Marine Corps, but I didn’t want to be a general,” he said. “I could do 12 more years and retire, but life isn’t about the retirement. It’s about making the best of every day.”
Now a civilian, Carter never really shed his belief in the people of the Marine Corps.
A classmate of his at VMI was killed by a sniper in Iraq this year. “He had two little girls,” Carter said. Sometimes Carter will go on the internet and look at the list of those killed in Iraq, and find names of people he knows.
“I know they were good guys and they were good Marines. It’s frustrating to see those names,” he said.
But he spends most of his days working at Quest Fitness, owned by his brother, Matt. Mark is a certified personal trainer, a certified kayak instructor and even certified in mountaineering.
He said he’s happy. “I’m outside a lot, which I love. I get to kayak on average about three days a week. Last summer I was kayaking about five days a week.” He teaches a kayak fitness class in the summer, called Kayak Crush. “It’s a great workout, and it’s also a great sunset, because we do it in the evenings.”
Between working at the fitness club and his growing family, Carter is busy, but once in a while the Marines call him back—literally. “I get a letters telling me about all the opportunities in the service. Once in a while I get a phone call from the Marines. I tell my wife to tell them that I’m out kayaking.”
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