BY AILIN TORO & MAN NGUYEN
Teddy Louis Jacques is a Malden High Alumni from the Class of 2007 and an active member in the Malden Community. He is currently enlisted in the United States Army and Massachusetts Army National Guard and has recently come home from a deployment.
Louis-Jacques completed his Basic Combat training and Advanced Individual Training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri from September 2014 to February 2015. When he came home in February, he found out that he was being deployed for the first time in his Army career. On October 22, 2015, he was deployed overseas to Kuwait. He came home from his deployment on September 9, 2016.
He talks about how joining the service, he was nervous and that the whole experience was “quite a journey.” He said how “as long you take care of the person to your left and the person to your right, the ones who are with you every single day, you’re good.” He refers to those people as his “battle buddies” and says that some of his fondest memories were formed with them.
As far as coming home, he talks of it as being a transition. He’s still getting used to everything. Before he left, he had thought that a year was that long, but now he realizes that “a lot changes in a year and that a lot of people’s lives get different.”
His “family means the world to [him],” especially his son Jeremiah. Louis-Jacques credits him as “the sole reason why [he is] working this hard in life.” He wants to “lay the groundwork to make sure a path is set for him for the future.” He mentions that his first day back all he and Jeremiah did was “just hug tightly.” He says that a “whole year of not seeing him was extremely hard” and that it has “been amazing being back and spending time with him.”
His current and future goals are to complete graduate school and run for public office in the City of Malden “sooner rather than later.”
He obtained his Bachelor’s of Science in Criminal Justice at Mount Ida College where he graduated as the Class President in May of 2011. Currently, he is in the process of obtaining another degree in Homeland Security & Emergency Management which he will complete in the spring of 2017.
He joined the Army because “[he] felt like he’s worked for the city since 2012 and that was one of the best experiences he’s had in his young adult life.” He saw that he was serving his community here and started to think about what’d it’d be like to serve his country and be part of something bigger.
One of Louis-Jacques’s hobbies is basketball, which he does while helping to coach basketball here at the high school. One of Teddy’s mentors and former coach, Don Nally, has been at Malden High for 17 years and Louis-Jacques contributes learning what being part of a team is like to him. Louis-Jacques says that Nally “is like a father to [him]” and that he wants to “give back all of the knowledge that Nally gave [him], to the new generations of young adults growing up and coming after [him].”
Another reason he coaches basketball is that he likes to help out in the community and this is an outlet for him to do that. He likes that he “gets to collaborate and help young kids find what they want to be and do with their lives after Malden High.”
Along with basketball, Louis-Jacques also played soccer and football during high school. He mentions that one of his fondest memories is being on the soccer team in 2006 when they won the championship and feels “fortunate and humbled” to be on that team. After high school he continued his sports career when he played four years of college basketball, which he “tremendously enjoyed.” There he experienced what it is like to be working together because people come from everywhere in the country and work together.
