In late January of last year, Grant Hermanns had a decision to make as he sat in a West Lafayette-area hotel room at the end of his official visit to Purdue.

Purdue wanted him, but so did Air Force, and the pull to a military academy was strong. His dad, Phil, had served in the Navy for 28 years, including a tour to Iraq in 2007 and various other deployments; older brother Duncan is aboard the USS Carl Vinson, which is currently patrolling the Korean Peninsula; and twin, Gregg, is at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.

And so Grant was struggling with a life-changing decision: Follow a family tradition — Phil says a family member has served in almost every major U.S.-involved war since the Revolutionary — or go to Purdue, where he could play Power 5 football.

“I said, ‘Son, you’ve got to take your own path,’” said Phil Hermanns, who works now at Sandia National Laboratories. “My path was to use the military to get out of my small town and I served. Duncan went and served. Gregg is headed that direction, but for you that may not be the path. You’ve go to follow what your heart tells you to do.’

“He said, ‘I would go (serve) if they needed me right now, but they don’t really need me and I really want to play football at Purdue.’ And I said, ‘Well, then you need to call (Air Force secondary) coach (John) Rudzinski and tell him you’re taking a different path. … You’ve got to go with what your heart tells you. I’m not going to make your decisions for you.’

“With the military, what I’ve always told my boys is that the difference between a leader and a follower is that a leader makes decisions. The military teaches you how to make decisions and follow through with decisions.”

And so Grant Hermanns chose Purdue, where he’s now a redshirt freshman offensive lineman who took every snap as the first-team left tackle in the spring and projects as a potential starter there in the fall.

It’s his upbringing that has helped Hermanns make a significant move up the depth chart in less than a year at Purdue. With the Hermanns, there are few corners that could be cut. Phil wasn’t going to allow it while he was home in Albuquerque N.M., but certainly shortcuts weren’t permitted when he was away — he completed exercises in Korea and the Philippines, along with the tour of Iraq — either.

When Phil left for Iraq in ’07, mom Kelli was left alone to support daughter Kara, then 19; Duncan, 17; and twins Grant and Gregg, both 12. She did so by working a couple jobs, a time-consuming necessity that left many household duties to the siblings.

That responsibility teaches accountability.

“It means hard work and sacrifice and giving up for each other,” Grant Hermanns said. “When I was a kid, I looked up to my dad and my mom and the sacrifices they had to make to support us and serve the country. It’s an honorable thing. It’s something to be admired.

“(Mom) was always running around and trying to do stuff, trying to take care of us and deal with the emotional stress of my dad being gone. I remember at times, we’d be watching a movie or something and a military scene would pop up and my mom had to leave the room because it was so emotional, a lot to deal with.”

The Hermanns continue to deal with the stress now, although Grant says it’s more of a constant in the background of his thoughts, rather than at the forefront of his every moment. He’s used to it by now, having lived the life for all of his 19 years.

Duncan, 24, is a third-class petty officer on the Carl Vinson, the same aircraft carrier, as it happens, that Phil had once served on 30 years previous. The massive ship is monitoring North Korea, whose leader, Kim Jong Un, recently threatened to sink an aircraft carrier.

Gregg, 19, is a fourth-class midshipman with the Merchant Marines, where he also plays football.

“I didn’t think about that kind of stress when I was deployed,” said Phil Hermanns, who was a senior chief petty officer in the Navy before retiring. “When I was deployed, I was more concerned about getting the job done, that kind of stuff. But my wife dealt with the stress and now that I have a son over there, I get to feel the kind of stress that she felt. The kind of stress the kids felt about watching the news, ‘Where’s daddy at? What’s daddy doing?’

“My wife would tell you that when I was deployed at Iraq, she said they literally sat down and watched TV during dinner every night. Kids didn’t usually watch the news, except when I was deployed, they were watching the news every night to see what was happening. There was an amount of world awareness that they gained.”

They gained a lot, particularly the work ethic needed to succeed “as a whole person,” as Phil Hermanns says, whether that involves family, community, academics or football.

For Grant Hermanns, the work comes naturally. As a freshman in high school, he set on a course for a football-related future, wanting then to find a way to earn a college scholarship. That wouldn’t be easy, not weighing 135 pounds at 5-foot-11 in his first year at Rio Rancho High School.

But Phil would tell him he could get to 260 by his senior year, and he did; by then, offers were coming in for the late-bloomer, to Purdue, Air Force, Illinois and others.

“The discipline is the thing,” said Grant Hermanns, now a 6-7, 293-pounder at Purdue. “Growing up in a military household, you can tell a military kid from a normal kid, because of the discipline, the ‘No sir, yes sir.’ I grew up saying that stuff, ‘No ma’am. Yes ma’am.’ It translates to a lot in my life. Discipline is the biggest thing, in my studies, in school, in football, being willing to work every day even when you don’t want to, getting up there and being willing to work in all aspects of life. It was a huge blessing to grow up in the military family.”

It’s been that way for a long time with the Hermanns. Grant’s grandfather is an Army veteran of the Vietnam War who gave Phil options years ago.

“He said (to my dad, Phil), ‘You either go to college or join the military. I’m going to kick you out at 18, so you’ve got to do one or the other.’ And my dad couldn’t afford college, so he went to the military,” Grant Hermanns said. “And it was kind of the same deal with us, either go to college at 18, get an education, or you go to the military. But if you’re not doing one or the other, you’re getting kicked out.

“I kind of made a decision that I wanted to go to college and the best way to pay for it was football — I could have gotten a few academics scholarships, but not paid for the whole thing — and my parents couldn’t afford it. So pay for it through sports and go out there and try to earn a scholarship and do that over the four years of high school.”

Grant is happy with his decision that he made more than a year ago in that hotel room. But he knows too that opportunities can change.

If a national tragedy happened — he was only 3 on Sept. 11, 2001 — he wouldn’t hesitate to join America’s finest.

“Without a doubt,” Grant Hermanns said. “Because when I was a kid, I know the sacrifices my dad had to make. Looking at his lifestyle and all the things this country has done for him in return, it’d be an easy decision. I’d drop football and go serve and when I came back, football would still be here.”

Phil Hermanns can see it.

“He’s that kind of kid,” dad said. “He’s about honor. I’ve always punched away at him, ‘Honor. Honor,’ and if something went down — if someone blew up that aircraft carrier that his brother is on — I’ll tell you right now that kid would go in to Coach and say, ‘Sorry, I’ve got to take off.’”

Membership Info: Sign up for GoldandBlack.com now | Why join? | Questions?

Follow GoldandBlack.com: Twitter | Facebook

More: Gold and Black Illustrated/Gold and Black Express | Subscribe to our podcast

Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2017. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited.