Craig Morgan
Wild Side Host
Very few people have pushed life to the limits that Craig Morgan has. An EMT at 18, a paratrooper at 20, and a member of the nation’s most elite forces a few years later, he is someone who has always packed a great deal into every moment - and learned to appreciate each one as well.
Craig has an incredible life to look back on. He was raised in tiny Kingston Springs, Tennessee, where he supplemented high school football and soccer with a deep and abiding love for the outdoors.
“My friends and I would load up our three-wheelers and leave home on Friday evening to go hunting or trapping,” he says. “We’d come back Sunday night. In between, we’d just pitch a tent when we were tired, sack out, then get up and do it again.”
As with many small-town kids with big-city dreams, Craig wanted to leave his rural roots behind him as soon as possible after high school. “I had spent my whole life in the country,” he says, “and I wanted to do something else.”
That something else was emergency medical technician training in Nashville. His first job was on a rural ambulance where he’d grown up, and from the moment he was called to his first traffic accident, the experience taught him a great deal about life, and about himself.
They were lessons that would serve him well as he followed what he saw as a bigger calling. “I'd seen the advertisements for the Army,” he says, “and I saw it as an opportunity for adventure beyond my country home.” The motivation, he says, wasn’t that different than what had driven him on weekends as a teenager.
“I wanted to shoot guns, run through the woods and wear camouflage clothes. Friday I decided I was going to do it, and Monday I being processed. They asked if I wanted to be airborne, and I said, ‘Absolutely.’ I thought that meant that I was going to be flying planes.” Turns out he was jumping out of them, which suited him just fine. “It’s pretty intense,” he says with a grin. “It’s as big an adrenaline rush as you can get in that little amount of time.
There was one drawback to the new world he found so challenging and exciting, but even it had a silver lining.
“I missed home very, very much,” he says. “That was the toughest thing about the early days. Still, it wasn’t until I joined the military that I realized just who I was and what I was about, and how much I liked being what I was, which was country.”
He would carry that pride in his heritage throughout an impressive and sometimes harrowing military tour. In Korea, he trained at ROK Ranger School, a nine-and-a-half-week program where the attrition rate was so high Americans are no longer allowed to take it. “You run virtually non-stop with a 35-pound rucksack,” he says, “eating very little. I’ve been to the point where I’ve been delirious, where I’d pass out, wake up and couldn’t move. You just find the place in your mind and your heart to get away from the pain.”
Back in the States, he became air assault qualified, and became a rappel master and a jump master. He was part of Operation Just Cause, which saw the U.S. in Panama during the ousting of Manuel Noriega.
In both training and in combat missions, he learned what he was made of. It was in the midst of his military career, though, that he discovered the musician inside himself. Early on, he was taking part in a banquet honoring the military’s very first airborne unit. As he learned of the group’s history, he decided to write a song about them. His superiors liked it so much that he was made part of the program. From then on he would have a reputation as a singer.
His sense of adventure and his love of adrenaline have not wavered either. He took part recently in the Mark Collie Race against Diabetes in Nashville, starting dead last and winning the race against some of the music industry’s best drivers. He called it an even bigger adrenaline rush than skydiving, and quipped, “It was an opportunity to drive fast and not have to worry about a ticket.”
Craig is nothing if not a dedicated family man. His mother first introduced him to his wife at a time when he was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. “I fell in love with Karen the instant I met her and we’ve been in love ever since.” Meeting Karen and falling in love with her was Craig’s inspiration in writing his debut single, “Something To Write Home About.” Craig’s wife and children share his love of the outdoors. When there is a break in his crowded schedule they might slip off together to a favored destination like the Smokey Mountains or Florida’s St. George’s Island. He treats everything as a potential source of joy.
As a family man, he makes time for fishing with his sons, spending time with his daughters and will always be available for those less fortunate. Craig puts all the lessons he’s learned along the way to work in his life.
Visit www.craigmorgan.com
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