Chris Grady

A GRADUATE WHO CHOSE A NEW PATH

Chris Grady had always wanted to be part of something bigger than himself. “I tried football my freshman year, but as you can tell by just looking at me” — he holds up a reed-thin bicep — “it didn’t work out.” By senior year, Grady had enlisted in the military, like his grandfather. The “camaraderie that goes with serving, that’s something I craved,” Grady says. “It just felt so right — up until it didn’t.”

The shift came in the days immediately after he hid in a closet, listening to the gunshots go off. “I can’t justify going overseas to protect the ones I care about when they’re getting murdered in their classrooms and on the streets,” he says. In June, instead of heading to basic training, Grady embarked on the March for Our Lives bus tour with other young survivors of gun violence. In January, he started college and plans to major in political science. “Talking to these politicians, nobody was taking us seriously,” he says. “It really helped make things clear what I wanted to do with my life.”