US Army celebrates 243 years: Staff Sgt. Christopher Upshaw

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - The United States Army celebrates a big birthday on Thursday: 243 years of selfless service to our nation.

This week we've been showcasing soldiers who give back.

My name is Staff Sgt. Christopher Upshaw and I'm with the 561st Engineer Construction Company out of Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. And I volunteer with the Special Olympics.

I wanted to get involved with the Special Olympics, cause it's a great organization. You know, it's known nationwide for the good things they do for children.

I wanted to be a facilitator, pretty much for volunteers with our unit. And see what I can do to provide them with personnel to go and then volunteer for myself. And what I did, is I actually used, I used social media to facilitate these volunteers and I had an outpouring of a lot of people, ended up getting over 120 people.

This was last year, and then from that point on, I kind of just developed a partnership with them.

Chris has been volunteering for us for about two years. You can just tell they have that leadership quality. He was able to take his volunteers and lead them, not only by instruction, but by example.

He came through like a shining star, he got over a hundred volunteers. They just knock everything out like superstars. And, Chris I don't know what I'd do without you. 

As the Army, we come into different communities and we're here for maybe three years at a time, and then we move out. And they do a lot for us, to facilitate us being around, and I feel like it's very important for us to be able to give back to them, to show that we want to be a part of that community.

And it's a good will partnership with every community that we're in.

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